!i!tii!iil iil!ii 



uc . /fur^j-u ■ h^u). 




/ 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/mindmatterOObrod 



\ 






■■■ 

\ 






MIND AND MATTER: 



OR 



PHYSIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES. 



IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, 

INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE 

THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE PHYSICAL ORGANIZATION 
AN!) THE MENTAL PACULTIEa 



BY 



Sir BENJAMIN, BKODIE, Baet. D.C.L., 

VICE-PRESIDENT OP THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 



titf) S&JiitUmal Notts 1% an &n«ruait HB&itor. 



NEW YORK : 
G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 321 BROADWAY. 

18 5 7. , 



t YmJr \ 



" The perceptions of the senses are gross, but even in the senses there 
is a difference. Though harmony and properties are not objects of sense, 
yet the eye and the ears are organs which offer to the mind such materials, 
by means whereof she may apprehend both the one and the other. By 
experiments of sense we become acquainted with the lower faculties of the 
soul ; and from them, whether by a gradual evolution or ascent, we arrive 
at the highest. Sense supplies images to memory. These become subjects 
for fancy to work on ; reason considers and judges of the imaginations ; and 
these acts of reason become new objects to the understanding. In this 
scale, each lower faculty is a step that leads to the one above it ; and the 
uppermost naturally leads to the Deity, which is rather the object of intel- 
lectual knowledge than even of the discursive faculty, not to mention the 
sensitive. There runs a chain throughout the whole system of beings. In 
this chain one link drags another ; the meanest things are connected with 
the highest. The calamity, therefore, is neither strange nor much to be 
complained of, if a low sensual reader shall, from mere love of the animal 
life, find himself drawn in, surprised and betrayed into, some curiosity 
concerning the intellectual." 

Sieis, A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions concerning the 
Virtues of Tar-water, by George Berkley, D.D. 
Lord Bishop of Cloyne, s. 803. 

fi 

/~~.X(L~l~y£} y-->/±> C2 



PREFACE 



TO THE 



THIRD LONDON EDITION. 



The subject of the present Volume, although replete with 
interest, and of much practical importance, is one as to which 
we have no means of obtaining such complete and definite 
knowledge as to admit of it being presented in the shape of a 
systematic treatise. Some points may be considered as esta- 
blished with a sufficient degree of certainty; there are others 
as to which opinions may reasonably differ ; while there is still 
a greater number as to which we must be content to acknow- 
ledge that, with our limited capacities, we have no means of 
forming an opinion at all. 

The method of dialogue seems to be especially adapted foT 
inquiries of this description ; and it is hoped that this will be 
considered as a sufficient apology for the form in which the 
following observations are submitted to the public. 

One of my correspondents seems to be of opinion that I 
have not sufficiently regarded the dignity of human nature in 
speaking of the minds of the inferior animals as belonging to 
the same mode of existence, or being of the same essence, with 
the mind of man. I do not myself see how any one, who does 
not (with Descartes) believe animals to be mere unconscious 



IV PREFACE. 

.machines, can arrive at any other conclusion. I do not, how- 
ever, feel that it is necessary for me to enter further into the 
qnestion, as it has been fully considered by one of much 
greater authority than myself; and I have only to refer to the 
observations on this subject contained in the first chapter of 
the Rev. Dr. Butler's Analogy of Religion to the Constitution 
and Course of Nature. 



CONTENTS. 



THE FIKST DIALOGUE. 

Introduction. — Pursuits in Retirement. — Limits of Mental Exer- 
tion. — The effort of Volition the source of Mental as it is of 
Bodily Fatigue. — The Imagination when we are Awake com- 
pared with that during Sleep. — Dreams. — Analogy of the 
Poetic Genius to that of Discovery in Science. — Sir Isaac New- 
ton's account of the Process of Discovery in his own Mind. — 
Mental Operations of which we seem to be unconscious. — 
How to be explained. — Evils of an Ill-regulated Imagination. 
— Fanatics and Impostors. — Modern Credulity. — Modern Edu- 
cation. — Influence of Mathematical Studies. — The Faculty of 
Correct Reasoning a natural gift rather than one acquired arti- 
ficially. — Self-education. — Sir Humphry Davy. — Sir "Walter 
Scott. — John Hunter. — Ferguson the Astronomer. — The level- 
ling influence of a high Education. — Advantages which may 
be expected to arise from the improvements of Education now 
in progress Page 1 

THE SECOND DIALOGUE. 

Mind and Matter. — Natural Theology. — Yiews of Sir Isaac New- 
ton. — Reasons for regarding the Mental Principle as distinct 
from Organization. — The Influence of the one on the other not 
sufficiently regarded by Metaphysicians. — Relations of the Ner- 
vous System to the Mental Faculties. — Speculations of Hooke, 
Hartley, &c. — The Brain not a single Organ, but a Congeries 
of Organs co-operating to one Purpose. — Physiological Re- 
searches of Magendie and Flourens. — The different Capacities 
of Individuals for the Perception of Colors, Musical Sounds, 



VI CONTENTS. 

&c, probably dependent on different Organization of the 
Brain. — Supposed Connection of the Cerebellum with Loco- 
motion. — Is there an Organ of Speech ? — Instances of "Want 
of Speech in those who were neither Deaf nor Idiotic. — Stam- 
mering. — Memory. — Dr. Hooke's Speculations. — Affections of 
the Memory from Cerebral Disease or Injury. — Impressions on 
the Brain not sufficient for Memory, unless accompanied by 
Attention, which is an Act of the Mind itself. — The Nature of 
the Physical Changes which occur in connection with the 
Memory beyond the reach of our Observation and Capa- 
cities -, Page 33 

THE THIRD DIALOGUE. 

The Subject of Memory continued. — Sequence and Association of 
Ideas. — Suggestion of Ideas by internal Causes acting on the 
Brain by the Nerves, or through the Medium of the Blood. — 
Influence of Narcotics, Morbid Poisons, Lithic Acid, Impure 
Atmosphere, and other Physical Agents on the Condition 
of the Mind. — Such Inquiries not only of scientific Interest, 
but also of practical Importance. — Physical Causes of Mental 
Illusions. — Examples of false Perceptions referred to the Sight 
and other Senses. — Other forms of Illusion more frequent 
in Cases of Mental Aberration than mere Deceptions of the 
External Senses. — Mr. Locke's Definition of Insanity not 
sufficiently comprehensive.— A too rapid Succession of Ideas, 
with Incapability of fixing the Attention, incompatible with 
correct Reasoning. — State of Mind in the so called "Moral 
Insanity." — Question as to the Limits of Moral Responsi- 
bility Page 64 

THE FOURTH DIALOGUE. 

Different Functions of the Brain and Spinal Chord. — Continuance 
of Life in some Animals without the Brain. — Automatic Mo- 
tions of Plants and of some of the lower Animals. — Multipli- 
cation of the latter by Division. — The Diplozoon Paradoxon. — 
Buffon's view of the Mode of Existence of the lower Animals. 
— A Nervous System not necessary to simple Animal Life. — 



CONTENTS. Vll 

Origin of the nervous Force. — Influence of the venous or 
dark-colored Blood on the Functions of the Nervous System. — 
The Absence of Sensibility or voluntary Power no Proof of the 
Absence of Consciousness. — Dr. Wollaston, &c. — State of 
Mind preceding Death. — Nature and Phenomena of Sleep. — 
Dreams the Result of the Imagination uncontrolled by the 
Will. — Rapidity of Dreams. — Their Character influenced by 
accidental physical Impressions. — Supposed Solutions of Pro- 
blems, &c. during Sleep. — Midler's Observations on the Sub- 
ject. — Do Dreams answer any Purpose in the Economy of 
living Beings? — Inquiries as to the Nature of the Changes 
which occur in the Nervous System in connection with Mental 
Operations Page 115 

THE FIFTH DIALOGUE. 

Mental Faculties of Animals. — Their Relation to the Structure of 
the Brain. — Difficulty of the Inquiry, but some knowledge of 
it not beyond our Reach. — Cerebral Organs connected with the 
Animal Appetites and Instincts. — Organs subservient to the 
Intellect. — Questions as to the Uses of the Cerebral Con- 
volutions. — The Posterior Lobes of the Cerebrum. — The Corpus 
CaUosum. — The Development of the Mental Faculties, how 
far dependent on the Perfection of the Senses, and other 
external Circumstances. — The Nature and Office of Instinct. — 
Intelligence not peculiar to Man, nor Instinct to the lower 
Animals. — Human Instincts. — The Social Instinct and the 
Moral Sense. — Some Instincts as necessary to Animal Existence 
as the Circulation of the Blood, and other mere Animal 
Functions. — Acquired Instincts transmitted from Parents to 
Offspring. — These considered with reference to Moral and 
Political Science. — The Social Instinct viewed as correcting 
or modifying other Instincts, and as being made more efficient 
by the greater Development of the Intellect. — The Religious 
Instinct. — Primary Truths of Buffier and Reid Page 173 

THE SIXTH DIALOGUE. 

Yiews of Human Nature. — The Science of Human Nature — its 
Objects and Applications — to be distinguished in its higher 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Department from the mere Practical Knowledge of Human 
Character which Men acquire for their own Purposes. — Different 
Opportunities of pursuing the Study of Human Nature presented 
to different Individuals. — The Observation of the Influence of 
the Body on the Mind, and of the Mind on the Body, a neces- 
sary Part of it. — The Science of Human Nature essential to the 
Science of Government. — The Pretensions of Phrenology. — Ana- 
tomical Objections to it. — Observations on the Evidence on which 
it rests. — Consideration of the Question as to the Relation of the 
Size of the Brain to the Development of the Intellect. — General 
View of the Circumstances which tend to form or modify Men's 
Characters. — The Science of Human Nature not reducible to 
any Simple Rules. — Qualifications necessary for the Pursuit of 
it. — Self-knowledge. — Duties and Responsibilities. — Conclu- 
sion Page 224 

Additional Notes Page 259 



MOD AND MATTER. 



, THE FIKST DIALOGUE. 

Introduction. — Pursuits in Eetirement. — Limits of Mental Exer- 
tion. — The effort of Volition the source of Mental as it is of 
Bodily Fatigue. — The Imagination when we are Awake com- 
pared with that during Sleep. — Dreams. — Analogy of the 
Poetic Genius to that of Discovery in Science. — Sir Isaac New- 
ton's account of the Process of Discovery in his own Mind. — 
Mental Operations of which we seem to be unconscious. — 
How to be explained. — Evils of an Ill-regulated Imagination. 
— Fanatics and Impostors. — Modern Credulity. — Modern Edu- 
cation. — Influence of Mathematical Studies. — The Faculty of 
Correct Reasoning a natural gift rather than one acquired arti- 
ficially. — Self-education. — Sir Humphry Davy. — Sir- Walter 
Scott. — John Hunter. — Ferguson the Astronomer. — The level- 
ling influence of a high Education. — Advantages which may 
be expected to arise from the improvements of Education now 
in progress. 

The Session of Parliament was drawing to a 
close. Ministers took advantage of the approach 
of the grouse-shooting ' season to hurry through 
the two Houses the various Bills which they 
could not venture to postpone for another year. 
Some official and professional persons still lin- 

1 



2 MIND AND MATTER. 

gered in the Clubs ; but the houses in the squares 
were deserted, and there was an end for some 
months of what is called, xxr Ife^'v, — London 
Society. Meeting accidentally a friend, whom I 
shall distinguish by the name of Crites, I ex- 
pressed my surprise at seeing him still in Lon- 
don. " Our Court," said he, " has been sitting 
later than usual ; but I am now emancipated, 
and I am about to pay a long-promised visit to 
our friend Eubulus. I know that it would afford 
him the greatest pleasure if you would accom- 
pany me as his visitor." 

Eubulus had been my intimate friend in early 
life. As boys, we had wandered together 
through our native woods ; as young men, we 
had similar pursuits and tastes ; had admired 
the same poetry, and had speculated together on 
subjects beyond the reach of human wit ; but 
afterwards, being engaged in different profes- 
sions, and our roads in life lying in different 
directions, we had parted company, and, as we 
travelled onwards, had only occasional glimpses 
of each other. Still, whenever we met, the influ- 
ence of old associations remained unimpaired; 



MIND AND MATTER. 6 

we were as intimate as formerly, and seemed to 
know more of eacli other than of any of the 
friends whom we had acquired at a later period 
of life. 

It was two or three years before the period of 
which I am now speaking that Eubulus, finding 
that his health was scarcely equal to the duties 
of the office which he held, and that, between 
what he had obtained by inheritance and a retir- 
ing pension, he had sufficient fortune to meet the 
reasonable demands of himself and his family, 
had gone to reside on a property, which he pos- 
sessed, at the distance of a hundred miles from 
the Metropolis ; and here he had repeatedly 
urged me to be his guest. Nothing could be 
more agreeable to me than the proposal which 
Crites made ; and the result was that, in less than 
forty-eight hours, we were both seated in a car- 
riage on the railway, and in the course of a few 
hours more, were set down within a mile of our 
destination. 

Our friend's house had been built in the 17th 
century, and, like many country houses of that 
date, was in a low situation, with a very limited 



4 MIND AND MATTEE. 

prospect. But this defect was compensated by 
the beauty of the surrounding country, which 
exhibited all that variety of picturesque scenery 
which a varied geological structure usually 
affords. On one side were steep and lofty chalk 
hills, covered by a scanty herbage, and dotted 
with yews and junipers. On another side was a 
still loftier hill, but of a more gradual elevation, 
composed of sand with a thin soil over it,' and 
covered with heath, with some clumps of Scotch 
firs scattered here and there. In the interme- 
diate valley there were fields and meadows, with 
stubble and green pasture, and intersected by a 
stream of water ; while at the foot of the chalk 
hills, and at no great distance from the house, 
there was an extensive beech wood, which, from 
the absence of underwood, and the magnitude 
and height of the trees, with their branches min- 
gling above, might be compared to an enormous 
cathedral, with its columns, and arches, " and 
dim religions light." 

On our arrival we found our friend waiting to 
receive us, there being no one with him but some 
of the junior members of his own family, who 



MIND AND MATTER. 5 

joined with him in his hospitalities. During the 
few days which our visit lasted we saw whatever 
was most worthy to be seen in the surrounding 
country, walking, or riding, and resting at inter- 
vals for the purpose of conversation. It seemed 
at times as if we had gone back to the period of 
our* early life. We expressed ourselves as freely 
as when we were young, having before us the un- 
known country which we were about to explore. 
Still we were sensible that we were not what we 
had been formerly. The world was no longer 
that fairy-land which our imagination was wont 
to furnish with its own images. We knew it, 
and the people in it, and we knew ourselves, 
better than when we began our journey. We 
had lost the joys of hope and expectation, but 
we had also lost many of the anxieties which not 
unfrequently obscured our brighter visions, and 
years had not rolled over us without leaving us, 
in the realities of life, many worthy subjects of 
contemplation. 

I have mentioned that Eubulus had quitted 
his official situation on account of the state of his 



b MIND AND MATTER. 

health ; but he had now so far recovered as to 
have considerable bodily activity, at the same 
time that he had lost none of his intellectual 
vigor. It was on the second day of our visit 
that I expressed to him the satisfaction which it 
afforded me to find that the experiment which 
he had made had proved to be so successful. I 
added, " It must, indeed, be delightful to you to 
find yourself here, where everything around you 
is so cheerful, with every comfort and luxury 
which you can wish for, and in the enjoyment of 
that perfect leisure which must be more agree- 
able from the contrast between it and the inces- 
sant exertions of your former life." 

" I have reason," he answered, " to be grate- 
ful to God for the many blessings which I enjoy. 
But do not speak of perfect leisure as one of 
them. It was very soon after I was established 
here that I made the discovery that it was neces- 
sary to my happiness that I should provide some 
new occupation for myself; and I succeeded in 
doing so. To those who have been brought up 
in idleness, a life of leisure is bad enough ; and 
hence we find that the more energetic among 



MIND AND MATTER. 



them are glad to exchange it for some kind of 
active pursuit, — politics, travelling, field-sports, 
horse-racing, gambling, according as their natu- 
ral tastes and ■ accidental circumstances give one 
or another direction to their minds. The vulgar 
phrase of killing time very aptly expresses the 
feelings of many on this subject. But if a life 
of leisure be painful to such persons, what must 
it be to one like you or me, who have advanced 
beyond the middle period of life, without having 
had any experience of it ? This is no speculative 
inquiry ; it may be answered from actual obser- 
vation. Not a few persons who abandon their 
employments under the impression that they will 
be happy in doing so, actually die of ennui. It 
induces bodily disease more than physical or 
mental labor. Others, indeed, survive the ordeal. 
But where the body does not suffer, the mind 
often does. I have known instances of persons 
whose habits have been suddenly changed from 
those of great activity to those of no employment 
at all, who have been for a time in a state of 
mental excitement, or of hypochondriasis, bor- 
dering on mental aberration. Moreover, it is 



8 MIND AND MATTER. 

• with, the mind as it is with the body — it is spoiled 
from want of use ; and the clever and intelligent 
young man, who sits down to lead what is called 
a life of leisure, invariably becomes a stupid old 
man." 

Ceites. You, at any rate, can have had no 
difficulty in finding an occupation for yourself. 
At school and college you made yourself not 
only a good Latin and Greek scholar, but also 
well acquainted with general literature. You 
have, I conclude, fallen back on your early 
studies'; and your library, I perceive, affords 
you abundant opportunities of doing so. 

Eubultjs. It is true that this is a great re- 
source, and that a person who has been originally 
well educated, has a very great advantage over 
one who has been in this respect less fortunately 
situated. But do not take it for more than it is 
worth. It must be confessed that to one who 
has been engaged in more active and exciting 
pursuits, whatever they may have been — poli- 
tics, profession, commerce, or anything else — 
mere reading, without any specific object, is, by 
comparison, but dull work. In early life we read 



MESTD AND MATTER. 9 

for some definite purpose, to make ourselves ac- 
quainted with a particular subject, or to obtain 
knowledge which is to be applied to the attain- 
ment of something that we have in view after- 
wards. Undoubtedly the mere acquirement of 
knowledge is in itself agreeable ; but something 
more than this is necessary, not only to keep the 
mind in a wholesome and vigorous state, but to 
happiness. Not only must the mental faculties 
be exercised, but it must be on a worthy subject, 
or with some ulterior view. It was better for 
Diocletian to plant cabbages than to do nothing ; 
and it is to be supposed that Charles the Fifth 
derived some sort of comfort from his flying 
puppets and self-flagellations ; but I suspect 
that, in spite of his misfortunes, Lord Bacon was 
not altogether unhappy while engaged in com- 
pleting his philosophical works ; and I cannot 
doubt that he was much less so than he would 
have been had he shared the occupations and 
amusements of the Emperors. 

Crites. But Lord Bacon could not have 
been wholly and entirely occupied in the 
way which you have mentioned. He must 



10 MEND AND MATTER. 

still have had many hours of leisure on his 
hands. 

Ehbulus. That is true. A man in a profes- 
sion may be engaged in professional matters for 
twelve or fifteen hours daily, and suffer no very 
great inconvenience beyond that which may be 
traced to bodily fatigue. The greater part of 
what he has to do (at least it is so after a certain 
amount of experience) is nearly the same as that 
which he has done many times before, and be- 
comes almost a matter of course. He uses not 
only his previous knowledge of facts, or his sim- 
ple experience, but his previous thoughts, and 
the conclusions at which he had arrived formerly ; 
and it is only at intervals that he is called upon to 
make any considerable mental exertion. But at 
every step in the composition of his philosophical 
works Lord Bacon had to think ; and no one can 
be engaged in that which requires a sustained 
effort of thought for more than a very limited 
portion of the twenty-four hours. Such an 
amount of that kind of occupation must have 
been quite sufficient, even for so powerful a mind 
as that of Lord Bacon. Mental relaxation after 



MIND AND MATTEK. 11 

severe mental exertion, is not less agreeable than 
bodily repose after bodily labor. A few hours 
of bond fide mental labor daily will exhaust the 
craving for active employment, and will leave 
the mind in a state in which the subsequent 
leisure (which is not necessarily mere idleness) 
will be as agreeable as it would have been irk- 
some and painful otherwise. 

Cbites. And what limits do you place to 
mental exertion of the kind to which you al- 
lude ? 

Eubulus. I do not see that it is possible to 
lay down rules for the mind in that respect, more 
than for the body ; so much must depend on its 
original powers, on the physical condition of the 
individual, and on his previous training. Those 
whose early education has been defective, for the 
most part, labor under a disadvantage from not 
having acquired the habit of attention at that 
period of life when habits are most easily esta- 
blished. A vast effort may be made for a short 
time. But great things are accomplished more 
frequently by moderate efforts persevered in, 
with intervals of relaxation, during a very long 



12 MIND AND MATTER. 

period. I have been informed that Cuvier was 
usually engaged for seven hours daily in his sci- 
entific researches ; but these were not of a nature 
to require continuous thought. Sir Walter Scott, 
if my recollection be accurate, describes himself 
as having devoted about six hours daily to lite- 
rary composition, and his mind was then in a 
state to enjoy some lighter pursuits afterwards. 
After his misfortunes, however, he allowed him- 
self no relaxation, and there can be little doubt 
that this over-exertion contributed, as much as 
the moral suffering which he endured, to the 
production of the disease of the brain, which 
ultimately caused his death. Sir David "Wilkie 
found that he was exhausted if employed in his pe- 
culiar line of art for more than four or five hours 
daily ; and it is probable that it was to relieve 
himself from the effects of too great labor that 
he turned to the easier occupation of portrait- 
painting. In fact, even among the higher grades 
of mind, there are but a few that are capable of 
sustained thought repeated day after day for a 
much longer period than this. For any one who 
is engaged in intellectual pursuits there is no 



MIND AND MATTER. 13 

more important rule of conduct than that he 
should endeavor to taJse a just measure of his 
own capacity, so that he may not be subject to 
the ill consequences which arise from the mind 
being strained beyond its natural powers. 

Crites. I conclude that you use the words 
thought and thinking in their more strict sense, 
as implying not simply attention, but also that 
the mind is actively employed in observing 
and comparing facts, reasoning on them, and 
deducing conclusions from them. 

Ettbultts. Certainly. I refer to an exercise 
of the mind beyond that which is required for 
learning what has already been proved, and fol- 
lowing in the steps of those who have gone before 
us ; and this being the case, the explanation of 
what I have just mentioned is sufficiently obvi- 
ous. Mere attention is an act of volition. Think- 
ing implies more than this, and a still greater 
and more constant exercise of volition. It is 
with the mind as it is with the body. Where 
the volition is exercised there is fatigue ; there 
is none otherwise : and in proportion as the voli- 
tion is more exercised, so is the fatigue greater. 



14: MIND AND MATTER. 

Tlie muscle of the heart acts sixty or seventy 
times in a minute, and the muscles of respiration 
act eighteen or twenty times in a minute, for 
seventy or eighty, or in some rare instances even 
for a hundred, successive years ; but there is no 
feeling of fatigue. The same amount of muscular 
exertion under the influence of volition induces 
fatigue in a few hours. I am refreshed by a 
few hours' sleep. I believe that I seldom, if 
ever, sleep without dreaming. But in sleep 
there is a suspension of volition. If there be 
occasions on which I do not enjoy the full and 
complete benefit of sleep, it is when my sleep is 
imperfect ; when my dreams are between waking 
and sleeping, and a certain amount of volition 
may be supposed to be mixed up with the phan- 
toms of the imagination. 

Ceites. But are you right in limiting the 
capability of the higher kind of intellectual 
labor in ordinary cases to so low an average as 
from four to five hours daily ? You referred to 
the instance of Sir Walter Scott ; but, if I re- 
member rightly, Sir Walter has a remark in his 
diary that, " as to his composition, it was seldom 



MIND AND MATTEK. 15 

five minutes out of his head during the whole 

day." 

Eubulus. This remark was made after his 
misfortunes, and when it is well known that he 
was exerting himself beyond his powers. But 
let us refer to the whole passage. He says, " If 
any one asks me what time I take to think of 
the composition, I might say, in one point of 
view, it was seldom five minutes out of my head 
in the whole day ; in another, it was never the 
subject of serious consideration at all, for it never 
occupied my thoughts for five minutes together 
except when I was dictating."* 

This brings us to the consideration of another 
faculty of the mind, a faculty than which there 
is none more important : in which I will not say 
that there is no thinking at all, but certainly 
nothing like intense thought. The imagination 
is here more at work than the reasoning powers, 
and it is to this faculty, which in a greater or 
less degree every one possesses, the child as well 
as the man, I might even say the idiot as well as 
the philosopher, that, being properly employed 

* "Diary," February, 1831. 



16 MIND AND MATTER. 

we owe the greatest contributions of genius to 
literature and science. As you have already 
referred to Sir "Walter Scott, I will take him for 
an example. The fictions of the " Lay of the 
Last Minstrel," or of "Waverley," cannot be 
supposed to have been the result of any exercise 
of volition. They presented themselves to his 
mind with no more effort than that which pre- 
cedes the visions of a dream. 

Ceites. Then you consider his novels and 
poems to have been the result of a sort of waking 
dream ? 

Eubulus. By no means. In sleep there is 
an absence of volition. If it be not wholly 
suspended, it is because the sleep is imperfect. 
The phantoms of the imagination are never sta- 
tionary. They succeed each other with such 
rapidity, that they can never be made the sub T 
ject of contemplation; and very often there is 
no connexion (that is, none that we can trace) 
between that which comes first and that which 
follows. That there really are certain laws 
which regulate their production, I do not doubt, 
as there are laws which regulate all the pheno- 



MIND AND MATTER. 17 

mena of the creation ; but whatever these laws 
may be, we know little, and generally nothing, 
of them. But when awake we have the power 
of arresting the current of the imagination ; we 
can make the obj ects which it presents to us the 
subject of attention; we can view them under 
different aspects, and thus perceive in them 
resemblances, relations, and analogies which we 
could not have perceived otherwise. Hence 
new objects are presented to us, not at random, 
but having a certain connexion with those by 
which they were preceded ; and from these we 
can reject one and select another, and go back 
to that which we had previously rejected. Our 
minds are so constructed, that we can keep the 
attention fixed on a particular object until we 
have, as it were, looked all around it ; and the 
mind that possesses this faculty in the greatest 
degree of perfection will take cognisance of rela- 
tions of which another mind has no perception. 
It is this, much more than any difference in the 
abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes 
the vast difference which exists between the 
minds of different individuals ; which distin- 



18 MIND AND MATTEK. 

guishes the far-sighted statesman from the shal- 
low politician ; the sagacious and accomplished 
general from the mere disciplinarian. Such also 
is the history, not only of the poetic genius, "but 
also of the genius of discovery in science. "I 
keep the subject," said Sir Isaac Newton, "con- 
stantly before me, and wait until the first dawn- 
ings open by little and little into a full light." 
It was thus that, after long meditation, he was 
led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anti- 
cipation of the modern discovery of the com- 
bustibility of the diamond. It was thus that 
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood ; 
and that those views were suggested to Davy, 
which are propounded in the Bakerian lecture 
of 1806, and which laid the foundation of that 
grand series of experimental researches which 
terminated in the decomposition of the earths 
and alkalis. 

Ceites. If I understand you rightly, you sup- 
pose that the mind, under the circumstances 
which you mention, is to a great extent in a pas- 
sive state, objects being presented to it, or con- 
ceptions arising in it, which are associated ac- 



MIND AND MATTER. 19 

cording to certain laws, which differ according 
to the peculiar structure of individual minds, but 
which are independent of any- direct act of voli- 
tion ; and that the latter is exercised only in 
keeping the object or conception in view while 
its various relations gradually unfold themselves 
to our observation. But it seems to me that on 
some occasions a still more remarkable process 
takes place in the mind, which is even more 
independent of volition than that of which we 
are speaking; as if there were in the mind a 
principle of order which operates without our 
being at the time conscious of it. It has often 
happened to me to have been occupied by a 
particular subj ect of inquiry ; to have accumu- 
lated a store of facts connected with it ; but to 
have been able to proceed no further. Then, 
after an interval of time, without any addition 
to my stock of knowledge, I have found the 
obscurity and confusion, in which the subject 
was originally enveloped, to have cleared away ; 
the facts have seemed all to have settled them- 
selves in their right places, and their mutual 
relations to have become apparent, although I 



20 MIND AND MATTER. 

have not been sensible of having made any dis- 
tinct effort for that purpose. 

EuBULus. "What you have now described has 
occurred repeatedly to myself. It is certainly 
not very easy to comprehend the nature of this 
mental operation. Is it that the subject every 
now and then comes before us, and is considered 
without our recollecting it afterwards ? — or is it, 
as a philosophical friend has suggested, that in 
the first instance we are perplexed by the mul- 
tiplicity of facts presented to us, and that after 
an interval of time those of less importance fade 
away, while the memory retains those which are 
essential, in the subsequent arrangement or clas- 
sification of which, being thus rendered more 
conspicuous, there is no difficulty ? 

Crites. The latter seems to be the more pro- 
bable explanation of the two. At the same time, 
it must be admitted that they are not incompati- 
ble with each other. 

Yet we may well doubt whether there be not 
something more than this. Observe what hap- 
pens during sleep. However vague and uncon- 
nected dreams may be, there is sometimes so 



MIND AND MATTER. 21 

much coherence in them, that they are very like 
realities. You hold a conversation with another 
person, who, in answer to what you say, uses an 
argument or makes an observation which you 
believe to be erroneous, and contradict. This is 
only one of many examples of the same kind 
which dreams afford. 

Eubtjltts. With reference to such dreams, 
Dr. Johnson has somewhere observed that the 
dreamer must have invented the argument used 
against himself without being aware that he had 
done so. This, however, is merely a statement 
of the fact, and no explanation of it. A late 
writer, whose mind had in it more of ingenuity 
than of philosophy, published a thick volume, 
to prove that each hemisphere of the cerebrum 
has a separate mind, and that on these occasions 
the two hemispheres might be considered as con- 
versing with each other.* The work to which I 
allude, however fantastic it may be, contains 
many curious illustrations of mental phenomena. 
But I do not believe the hypothesis, or rather, I 
should say, that it is not in my nature to believe 

* On the Duality of the Mind, by A. L. Wigan, M.D., 1844. 



22 MIND AND MATTER. 

it. It seems to me that the question as to the 
oneness and individuality of the mind is very 
clearly and unanswerably stated by Father Buf- 
fier.* It is one of those fundamental truths 
which are inherent in us, and defy all argument ; 
which I can no more help believing than I can 
help believing in the external world, or even in 
my own existence. 

Ceites. The subject of dreams is one of great 
interest, and I shall be glad if we can have the 
opportunity of discussing it hereafter. At pre- 
sent I would rather revert to a former part of 
our conversation. 

Admitting all that you say as to the advantage 
of contemplative habits, still you surely do not 
mean to assert that these are more important 
than the capability of forming a right judgment 
of the thing before us, and of reasoning accu- 
rately. 

Eubultts. Certainly not. But neither do I 
doubt that in all cases in which we have to ar- 
rive at a conclusion by comparing the evidence 
on one side with that on the other (and these in- 

* Traits des Premieres Verites. Deuxieme partie, ch. 10. 



MIND AND MATTER. 23 

elude all branches of human knowledge except 
pure mathematics), nothing contributes so much- 
to accurate reasoning as the habits of which we 
are speaking. The principal defect in those who 
reason inaccurately is that so happily illustrated 
by the fable of the two knights disputing about 
the gold and silver shield. They do not see, or 
they do not take into the account, the whole of 
the facts on which their conclusion is to be 
founded. "Who is so little liable to fall into this 
error as the individual who keeps the subject to 
which his inquiries are constantly directed before 
him, until all its relations gradually are pre- 
sented to his view ? Observe, that I am speaking 
of a well-regulated imagination, which is not led 
astray by prejudice or passion, or fanciful analo- 
gies. The ill-regulated imagination of inferior 
minds is quite a different matter, and produces 
nothing but enthusiasts, fanatics, and, I may add, 
impostors. 

Crites. But, unfortunately, it is these last 
classes of persons who, by means of their activity 
and earnestness, are often the most influential in 
the world. A fanatical monk persuaded the 



24: MIND AND MATTEE. 

wliole of Christendom to embark in the wild 
scheme of the Crusades. Lord George Cordon, 
a crazy fanatic, led the London mob to burn 
down Newgate, and nearly to involve the whole 
of the metropolis in the conflagration. It is not 
long since no small number of persons, and not 
merely those belonging to the uneducated classes, 
were led to believe that a dropsical old woman 
was about to be the mother of the real Shiloh : 
and, even at the present day, many thousand Mor- 
monites attest their belief in the divine mission 
• of a half-madman and half-impostor in the person 
of Joe Smith. How many similar histories may 
be furnished by any one who studies the past 
history of the human race ! 

Eubultjs. I am afraid that we need not go so 
far back as the age of the Crusades, nor refer to 
the disciples of Joanna Southcote, or the Mor- 
monites, for instances of such credulity on the 
part of a considerable portion of mankind. "We 
have, indeed, discarded our faith in astrology 
and witches : we pity the ignorance of the poor 
African, who, in a season of drought, seeks the 
conjurations of the rainmaker; we cannot well 



MIND AND MATTEK. 25 

comprehend how it was that the civilised Athe- 
nians of the third century should have believed 
that marble statues would feel themselves to be 
offended, and show their displeasure by leaving 
their pedestals and walking about at night.* 
Nevertheless, with all our boasted wisdom, and 
all our advance in knowledge, there are at the 
present day many who believe in things not sup- 
ported by better evidence than these. There 
are epidemics of opinion as well as of dis- 
ease, and they prevail at least as much among 
the well-educated as among the uneducated 
classes of society. The energy and sincerity of 
enthusiasts is powerful in all ages, and carries 
with it the conviction of that large portion of 
mankind who do not inquire or think for them- 
selves. It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that a 
great extension of education and knowledge does 
not produce any corresponding improvement in 
this respect. Still, in the end, good sense pre- 
vails. Errors and deceptions last only for a time. 
Those which disgrace one age vanish, and are 
succeeded by those which disgrace the next, 

* Lucian in Philopseudes. 
B 



26 MIND AND MATTER. 

But a truth once established remains undisputed, 
and society, on the whole, advances. 

Grites. But does not what you have now 
stated tend to show that there is some defect in 
modern education ? Might it not do more than 
it does towards the improvement of the reason- 
ing faculty? 

Eubtjlus. I doubt it. Education does a great 
deal. It imparts knowledge, and gives the indi- 
vidual worthy objects of contemplation for the 
remainder of his life. It strengthens his power 
of attention ; and such is especially the case with 
the study of mathematics ; and in doing so, it 
cannot fail, to a certain extent, to assist the judg- 
ment. Still it seems to me that to reason well is 
the result of an instinct originally implanted in 
us, rather than of instruction ; and that a child 
or a peasant reasons quite as accurately on the 
thing before him and within the sphere of his 
knowledge, as those who have gone deep into 
the study of logic as a science. "With regard 
even to mathematics, I much doubt whether they 
tend to improve the judgment on those subjects 
to which they 'are not immediately applicable. 



MIND AND MATTER. 27 

Dugald Stewart makes the following observation : 
— ' k In the course of my own experience I have 
never met with a mere mathematician who was 
not credulous to a fault, not only with respect to 
human testimony, but credulous also in matters 
of opinion, and prone on all subjects, which he 
had not carefully studied, to repose too much 
faith in illustrious and consecrated names."* 
Nor is this at all difficult to explain. The prin- 
cipal errors of reasoning on all subjects beyond 
the pale of the exact sciences arise from our look- 
ing only on one side, or too exclusively on one 
side, of the question. But in mathematics there 
is no alternative. It has nothing to do with de- 
grees of probability. The truth can be on one 
side only, and we arrive at a conclusion about 
which there is no possibility of doubt, or at none 
at all. In making these observations, however, 
do not suppose that I do not sufficiently estimate 
this most marvellous science, which, from the 
simplest data, has been made to grow up into 
what it now is, by the mere force of the human 
intellect ; the truths of which would have been 

* Moral Philosophy, 4th edition, 1827, vol. hi. p. 280. 



28 MIND AND MATTER. 

the same if lieaven and earth had never existed ; 
would be the same still if they were to now pass 
away ; and by means of which those branches 
of knowledge to which it is applicable have been 
brought to a state of perfection which others can 
never be expected to attain. 

Eegates. It certainly seems to me, as it does 
to Eubulus, that the faculty of reasoning cor- 
rectly (or what is commonly called having a clear 
head) is for the most part a natural gift, and that 
it admits of being artificially improved only in a 
limited degree. Indeed, it admits of a question, 
whether modern education, instead of doing too 
little, does not, on the whole, err on the side of 
attempting to do too much? Sir Humphrey 
Davy, when a boy, was placed under a school- 
master who neglected his duties, and adverting 
to this subject in a letter addressed to his mother 
after he was settled in London, he says, " I con- 
sider it as fortunate that I was left much to my- 
self as a child, and put on no particular plan of 
study, and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. 
Coryton's school. I, perhaps, owe to these circum- 
stances the little talents I have, and their pecu- 



MIND AND MATTER. 29 

liar application. "What I am I made myself. I 
say this without vanity, and in pure simplicity 
of heart."* John Hunter, who, in the depart- 
ment of science, is one of the most remarkable 
individuals whom this country has produced, 
had applied very little to study of any kind 
until he came to London, and began that of ana- 
tomy, under his brother William. Like Davy, 
he was distinguished for his perseverance, the 
originality and comprehensiveness of his views, 
and the clearness of his intellect. Would not 
these faculties have been cramped and deranged, 
rather than improved, by a more systematic 
education? 

Eubttlus. In accordance with your view of 
the matter, Sir Walter Scott has somewhere ob- 
served, that "the best part of every man's edu- 
cation, is that which he gives himself ;" and I 
willingly admit that, among those whose intel- 
lect is of the higher order, there are many who 
would ultimately accomplish greater things if in 
early life they were left more to their own medi- 
tations and inventions than is the case among the 

* Memoir, by John Davy, M.D., vol. i., chap. 1. 
B* 



30 MESTD AND MATTEK. 

more highly educated classes of the community.* 
Ferguson, the astronomer and mechanical philo- 
sopher, told Dugald Stewart that " he had more 
than once attempted to study the ' Elements of 
Euclid,' but found himself incapable of entering 
into that species of reasoning. He satisfied him- 
self of the truth of the various geometrical pro- 
positions of which he had daily occasion to make 
use, by means of compasses and other mechanical 
contrivances."f It is well known that Ferguson 
had little or no education. If it had been other- 
wise, it is more than merely probable that he 
would have been held to be a dunce, and that the 
peculiar talent by which he acquired his reputa- 
tion would have been crushed or wasted. A high 
education is a leveller, which, while it tends to 
improve ordinary minds, and to turn idleness 
into industry, may, in some instances, have the 
effect of preventing the full expansion of genius. 
The great amount of acquirement rendered 
necessary by the higher class of examinations as 
they are now conducted, not only in the univer- 

* See Additional note A. 

f Stewart's Moral Philosophy, 1814, vol. ii. p. 196. 



MIND AND MATTEE. 31 

sities, but in some other institutions, while it 
strengthens the power of learning, is by no 
means favorable to the higher faculty of reflec- 
tion. But it must be borne in mind, that in this 
world none of our schemes are perfect, and that 
in all human affairs we must be content to do 
that which is best on the whole. Geniuses are 
rare exceptions to the general rule ; and a mode 
of education, which might be well adapted to 
the few who think for themselves, would be 
ruinous to the unreflecting majority. As to 
making one system of education for one class of 
minds, and another for another, there are, if I 
may be allowed to use a metaphorical expression, 
mechanical difficulties in the way. Besides, who 
is to know what a boy's mind is, or what is his 
peculiar turn, until the 'greater part of his edu- 
cation is completed ? 

Ceites. I agree with you to a great extent, 
but not altogether. 

" Est quadam prodire terras si non datur ultra." 

I apprehend that the changes as to education, 
which are now in progress in this country, of 



32 MIND AND MATTER. 

which the principal result will be the introduc- 
tion of new branches of study into our schools 
and colleges, will do much towards remedying 
the defects of the present system. Those who 
have it not in their power to excel in one thing 
will find that they may, nevertheless, excel in 
another ; and each individual will naturally, 
and almost unconsciously, direct his attention to 
those subjects which are most congenial to his 
taste, and best adapted to the peculiar structure 
of his mind. 



THE SECOND DIALOGUE. 

Mind and Matter. — Natural Theology. — Views ot Sir Isaac New- 
ton. — Reasons for regarding the Mental Principle as distinct 
from Organization. — The Influence of the one on the other not 
sufficiently regarded by Metaphysicians. — Relations of the Ner- 
vous System to the Mental Faculties. — Speculations of Hooke, 
Hartley, &c. — The Brain not a single Organ, but a Congeries 
of Organs co-operating to one Purpose. — Physiological Re- 
searches of Magendie and Flourens. — The different Capacities 
of Individuals for the Perception of Colors, Musical Sounds, 
&c, probably dependent on different Organization of the 
Brain. — Supposed Connection of the Cerebellum with Loco- 
motion. — Is there an Organ of Speech ? — Instances of "Want 
of Speech in those who were neither Deaf nor Idiotic. — Stam- 
mering. — Memory. — Dr. Hooke's Speculations. — Affections of 
the Memory from Cerebral Disease or Injury. — Impressions on 
the Brain not sufficient for Memory, unless accompanied by 
Attention, which is an Act of the Mind itself. — The Nature of 
the Physical Changes which occur in connection with the Me- 
mory beyond the reach of our Observation and Capacities. 

It was on the day following that of the fore- 
going discussion that our friend invited us to 
accompany him to a spot in the neighborhood 
which, from its greater elevation, afforded an 
extensive panoramic view of the whole of the 
surrounding country. Our road was by an easy 
ascent ; the weather was fine ; and, as we pro- 
ceeded leisurely, we were able to combine the 

2* 



34 MIND AND MATTER. 

pleasures of conversation with those of breath- 
ing the fresh air and admiring the beauties of 
the scenery. When we had reached the sum- 
mit of the hill, we were amply rewarded for the 
trouble of ascending it. It was one of those 
days which so frequently precede a fall of rain, 
when the transparency of the atmosphere ren- 
ders distant objects unusually distinct, and ap- 
parently less distant than they really are. For 
twenty-five or thirty miles, on every side, the 
country lay before us, with its woods and mea- 
dows, villages and churches, as plain as if they 
had been represented on a map. The sun was 
at this time about two hours above the horizon, 
his beams being occasionally intercepted by 
some light clouds, the shadows of which some- 
times fell on ourselves, and at other times were 
seen rapidly traversing the landscape below. A 
slender moon, not more than three days old, was 
seen following the sun towards the west. 

" T never," said Eubulus, " find myself left to 
my own contemplations in a situation such as 
this without a feeling of wonder at myself and 
my own existence. Here am I, I mean I, who 



MIND AND MATTER. 35 

feel and think, pent up within the narrow dwell- 
ing of my own body, yet taking cognisance of 
things remote in space, not only of those which 
belong to our own world, but of those in the 
vast universe around us. Marvellous as this 
may be, let us wait but for a few hours, and we 
have what is still more marvellous. By the aid 
of a tube and a few glasses, I may become ac- 
quainted with other objects, suns and worlds, 
distant from us not only in space, but also in 
time, which I see not as they now are, but as 
they were many thousands of years before I my- 
self was in existence. I do not say that such 
reflections prove more than may be proved in 
other ways, but they certainly impress my mind 
more strongly with the conviction that, as a per- 
cipient, conscious, and intelligent being, I be- 
long to a mode of existence wholly different 
from that of the senseless bodies by which I am 
surrounded, and that (even independently of the 
evidence afforded by revelation) there is nothing 
unreasonable in the universal expectation of 
mankind (so universal, indeed, that it may well 
be regarded as an instinct) that there is some- 



36 MIND AND MATTER. 

thing in us which will remain, and be capable 
of perception and thought, and it may be of 
pure and high aspirations, when the gross mate- 
rial fabric with which it is now associated has 
become resolved into its original elements." 

Ckites. I can perfectly enter into the senti- 
ments which you have now expressed. The 
properties of mind are so wholly different from 
those of matter, the two are so completely asun- 
der, that they do not admit even of the most dis- 
tant comparison with each other. I can easily 
imagine that motion, gravitation, heat, light, 
electricity, magnetism, chemical attraction, have 
something in common ; that they are (as, indeed, 
Mr. Grove has shown them to be) so far of the 
same essence as to be convertible into each 
other ; but it is to me wholly inconceivable that 
any exaltation of the known properties of matter 
should produce the conscious indivisible monad 
which I feel myself to be. "When the mate- 
rialist argues that we know nothing of mind ex- 
cept as being dependent on material organiza- 
tion, I turn his argument against himself, and 
say that the existence of my own mind is the 



MIND AND MATTER. 37 

only thing of which I have any positive and ac- 
tual knowledge. I cannot help believing in the 
existence of an external world. Still the hypo- 
thesis of its non-existence implies no contradic- 
tion ; whereas it is as much a contradiction to 
doubt the existence of my own mind as it would 
be to doubt that two and two are equal to four. 
You must excuse me., however, if I say that it 
occurred to me yesterday (though I did not no- 
tice it at the time) that in one of your remarks, 
you seemed to identify the functions of the mind 
with those of the body more than you are dis- 
posed to identify them at present. I allude to 
the comparison which you made of the effect 
produced by long-continued voluntary effort in 
the maintenance of muscular contraction, and in 
the operations of the intellect. 

Eubultjs. "When we say that we believe in 
the independent existence of the percipient and 
thinking principle, I apprehend that neither you 
nor I can mean to deny the obvious fact of it 
having a connection with our bodily organs, by 
means of which it receives impressions from 
without, and operates in return on bodies exter- 

4 



3S MIND AND MATTEE. 

nal to itself.* This, however, is not peculiar to 
such humble beings as ourselves. When I con- 
template the evidence of intention and design 
which present themselves everywhere around 
us, but which, to our limited comprehensions, is 
more especially manifested in the vegetable and 
animal creations, I cannot avoid attributing the 
construction and order of the universe to an in- 
telligent being, whose power and knowledge are 
such that it is impossible for me to form any 
adequate conception of them, any more than I 
can avoid referring the motions of the planets 
and stars to the same law of gravitation as that 
which directs the motions of our own globe. 
But no one, I apprehend, will maintain that the 
mind of the Deity depends on a certain con- 
struction of brain and nerves ; and Dr. Priest- 
ley^ the most philosophical of the advocates of 
the system of materialism, ventures no further 
than to say that we have no knowledge on the 
subject. But, to use the words of Sir Isaac 
Newton, " This powerful ever-living agent being 

* See Additional Note B. 

\ Priestley, Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, sect. 9. 



MIND AND MATTER. 39 

in all places, is more able to move the bodies 
within his boundless uniform sensorium, and 
thereby to form and reform the parts of the uni- 
verse, than we are, by our will, to move the 
parts of our own bodies." The remainder of the 
passage from which I have made this quotation, 
is not without interest, as indicating the view 
which Newton took of the matter in question :• — ■ 
" And yet we are not to consider the world as 
the body of God, or the several parts thereof as 
the parts of God. He is an uniform being, void 
of organs, members, or parts, and they are his 
creatures, subordinate to him and subservient to 
him, and he is no more the soul of them than 
the soul of man is the soul of the species carried 
through the organs of sense into the place of its 
sensation, where it perceives them by its imme- 
diate presence, without the intervention of any 
third thing. The organs of sense are not for en- 
abling the soul to perceive the species of things in 
its sensorium, but only for conveying them thither ; 
and God has no need of any such organs, he being 
everywhere present to the things themselves."* 

* Optics, book iii., p. 379, 4th edition. 



40 MIND AND MATTER. 

Eegates. I entirely agree with you in the 
opinion that we must admit the existence of the 
Deity as a fact as well established as that of the 
law of gravitation, and that in doing so we must 
further admit that mind may and does exist, 
independently of bodily organization. Be it also 
admitted that mind, in its humblest form, is still 
mind, and that, immeasurable as the distance 
between them may be, it must nevertheless be re- 
garded as being of the same essence with that of 
the Deity himself. For my own part, I find no 
difficulty in conceiving the existence of mind in- 
dependently of corporeal organs. But our actual 
experience of the human mind is only as we find 
it in this combination, and in no other way can 
it be the proper object of study. It seems to me 
that the best writers on mental philosophy have 
erred in considering the mind too abstractedly, 
and in not taking sufficiently into the account 
the physical influences to which it is subjected. 

Eubultts. There are, however, those who form 
an exception to this rule ; for example : Des- 
cartes, Hartley, and that universal genius Dr. 
Hooke. Moreover, Dr. Keid's inquiry into the 



MIND AND MATTER. 41 

human mind is founded on a critical exami- 
nation of the several senses ; and Dr. Berkley's 
essay on the corporeal function of vision contains 
the germ of all his metaphysical investigations. 

Ceites. You might have included the mys- 
tical speculations of Unzer and some other Ger- 
man writers. Keid and Berkley were certainly 
as far as possible from being materialists. The 
others, without one exception, have been guilty 
of an error the very opposite to that which I 
have mentioned, giving as an explanation of 
mental phenomena that which not only has no 
foundation in observation and experience, but 
which is, indeed, no explanation at all. When 
I learn from Hartley that thought is a vibration 
of the fibres of the brain ; and from Hooke that 
there is a matter in the brain intended to receive 
the impressions of sound, which may be com- 
pared to the bells and vases which Yitruvius de- 
scribes as being placed in the ancient theatres ;"- 
and that thinking is the radiation of the soul 
from one part of the brain to another, I do not 
find myself a whit wiser than I was before. 

* Posthumous Works. — Lectures on Light, sect. 7. 
4* 



42 MIND AND MATTER. 

Eubultjs. That may be true. But when 
Hooke states that there are various structures in 
the brain adapting it for the part which it has 
to perform in connection with the mental prin- 
ciple, — that there is an organ of memory, for 
example, — I find so many facts which are favor^ 
able to this opinion, that I cannot but regard it 
as more than a mere hypothesis. As to this 
point, however, Ergates has had greater oppor- 
tunities than I have had of obtaining informa- 
tion ; and I should be well pleased to hear what 
he has to say on the subject. 

Eegates. If I comply with your wishes, I 
must make some small demand on your patience, 
as, although what I have to say may not be 
much in substance, it cannot be compressed into 
a very few words. 

"We may safely assume, as an established fact, 
that it is only through the instrumentality of the 
central parfs of the nervous system that the mind 
maintains its communication with the external 
world. The eye is necessary to sight, and the 
ear to hearing ; and so with the other organs of 
sense. But the eye does not see, and the ear 



MIND AND MATTER. 43 

does not hear ; and if the nerve which forms the 
communication between any one organ of sense 
and the brain be divided, the corresponding 
sense is destroyed. In like manner it is from the 
brain that all those impulses proceed by which 
the mind influences the phenomena of the exter- 
nal world. The division of the nerves which 
extend from the brain to the larynx destroys the 
voice. The division of the nerves of a limb 
causes the muscles of the limb to be paralysed, 
or, in other words, withdraws them from the 
influence of the will; and the division of the 
spinal chord destroys at once the sensibility and 
the power of voluntary motion in all the parts 
below that at which the division has been made. 
If we investigate the condition of the various 
orders of vertebrate animals, which alone admit 
of a comparison with our own species, we find, 
on the one hand, great differences among them 
with regard to both their physical and mental 
faculties ; and on the other hand a not less 
marked difference as to the structure of their 
brain. In all of them the brain has a central 
organ, which is a continuation of the spinal 



44 MIND AND MATTEE. 

chord, and to which anatomists have given the 
I name of medulla oblongata. In connection with 
this there are other bodies placed in pairs, of a 
small size and simple structure, in the lowest 
species of fish, becoming gradually larger and 
more complex as we trace them through the 
other classes, until they reach their greatest de- 
gree of development in man himself. That each 
of these bodies has its peculiar functions there 
cannot, I apprehend, be the smallest doubt ; and it 
is, indeed, sufficiently probable that each of them 
is not a single organ, but a congeries of organs, 
having distinct and separate uses. Experimental 
physiology, joined with the observation of the 
changes produced by disease, has thrown some 
light on this mysterious subject. There is reason 
to believe that, whatever it may do besides, one 
office of the cerebellum is to combine the action 
1 of the voluntary muscles for the purpose of loco- 
motion. The corpora guadrigemina are four 
tubercles, which connect the cerebrum, cerebel- 
lum, and medulla oblongata to each other. If 
one of the uppermost of these bodies be removed, 
blindness of the eye of the opposite side is the 



MIND AND MATTER. 45 

consequence. If the upper part of the cerebrum 
be removed, the animal becomes blind, and ap- 
parently stnpifled, but not so much so but that he 
may be roused, and that he can then walk with 
steadiness and precision. The most important 
part of the whole brain seems to be one particu- 
lar part of the central organ, or medulla oblon- 
gata. "While this remains entire, the animal 
retains its sensibility, breathes, and performs 
instinctive motions. But if this very minute 
portion of the nervous system be injured, there 
is an end of these several functions, and death 
immediately ensues. These facts, and some 
others of the same kind, for a knowledge of 
which we are indebted to modern physiologists, 
and more especially to M. Magendie and M. 
Flourens, are satisfactory as far as they go, and 
warrant the conclusion that there are various 
other organs in the brain, designed for other 
purposes, and that if we cannot point out their 
locality, it is not because such organs do not ex- 
ist, but because our means of research into so 
intricate a matter are very limited. 

Ceitbs. Granting your proposition, and not 



46 MIND AND MATTER. 

denying that there may be original differences 
in the mental principle itself, we perceive to 
how great an extent the propensities and cha- 
racters of individuals may depend on their physi- 
cal organization. One person, for instance, may 
have a nicer perception of colors than another in 
consequence of the organ by which colors are 
distinguished being in the one more, and in the 
other less, developed. 

Eegates. Or the organ may be so imperfect 
that the perception of colors may be in a great 
degree, and as to some colors entirely, wanting. 
In fact, examples of this imperfection are not 
very uncommon. There are some persons who 
are incapable of recognising the difference of 
colors which appear quite different to ordinary 
observers, and who are especially liable to con- 
found the two complementary colors of red and 
green with each other, so that where a scarlet 
cloth is laid out on the green turf they perceive 
no difference between them. The great differ- 
ence which exists in different individuals as to 
the perception of musical sounds, or the power 
of numerical calculation, is best explained by 



MIND AND MATTER. 47 

attributing it to a difference of organization ; and 
it is probable that tlie imperfection or absence 
of other faculties which we occasionally meet 
with is to be explained in the same manner. 
For example, if there be a part of the brain 
whose office it is to combine the action of muscles 
for the purpose of locomotion, it is a fair conclu- 
sion that there is some other part of it answering 
the same purpose as to the muscles of speech ; 
an organ which, if not peculiar to them, is most 
complete and perfect in the human race, the 

Ckites. If so, an imperfection or absence 
of this organ should be a cause of dumbness. 
But I have understood that dumb persons are 
either those who are congenitally deaf, so that 
they cannot hear the sounds which they are re- 
quired to imitate, or those who are idiotic, and 
deficient in other faculties as well as this. 

Ergates. What you have stated is undoubt- 
edly the general rule. There are, however, cases 
of incapability of articulate speech which cannot 
be referred to either of these categories. There 
are individuals who, having suffered from disease 



48 MIND AND MATTER. 

of the brain, are unable to express their thoughts 
by speech, although their faculties being little 
or not at all impaired otherwise, they have a 
perfect comprehension of what others say, and 
of what they wish to say themselves. Some of 
them can utter a few words, others none at all, 
and others again, when intending to say one word, 
use another. There are other cases still more 
remarkable, the facts of which may well lead us 
to believe that the organ of speech, if not origi- 
nally and congenitally wanting, has been at any 
rate from the beginning so imperfect as to be 
useless. Two examples of what I have now men- 
tioned have come under my own observation. 
Several years ago, I saw a little boy, then about 
five years old, whose faculty of speech was 
limited to the use of the word papa. This, it 
may be observed, is so simple a sound, that dolls 
are made, by some very simple mechanism, to 
produce it very distinctly. I soon ascertained 
that his sense of hearing was perfect, and that 
there was nothing peculiar in the formation of 
the soft palate, mouth, and lips. There was no 
want of inclination to speak, but in the attempt 



MIND AND MATTER. 49 

to do so he produced sounds ■which were wholly 
inarticulate. So far was he from being deficient 
as to his powers of apprehension, that he seemed 
to be even beyond what children of the same 
age generally are in this respect. Although he 
could not speak himself, he understood perfectly 
what was said to him by others, and expressed 
his answers by signs and gestures, spelling with 
counters monosyllabic words which he was inca- 
pable of uttering. I should add, that the exter- 
nal senses and powers of locomotion were perfect, 
and that all the animal functions were properly 
performed. The only other sign of disease or 
imperfection of the nervous system was that, for 
two or three years before I saw him, the boy 
had been subject to fits or nervous attacks, at- 
tended with convulsions, but which (as I was 
informed) his medical attendant in the country 
regarded as having the character of hysteria 
rather than that of epilepsy. 

I have had no other opportunity of making 
my own observations on the case ; but eight 
years afterwards I was informed, on good au- 
thority, that the boy was still unable to speak, 

5 



50 MIND AND MATTER. 

though he had made much progress otherwise ; 
and that, among other acquisitions, he wrote 
beautifully, and was very clever in arithmetic. 

The other case to which I have referred was 
that of a girl, who, at the time of my seeing her, 
was eleven years of age. She had no faculty of 
speech, uttering merely a few inarticulate sounds, 
which her parents in some degree understood, 
but which were wholly unintelligible to others. 
It was easily ascertained that her sense of hear- 
ing was perfect, and that there was no defect 
in the formation of the external organs. After 
a careful examination, I was satisfied that the 
parents were correct in saying that she compre- 
hended all that was said to her. She was per- 
fectly tractable and obedient, and did not differ 
either in her appearance or as to her general be- 
havior, from other intelligent children. Being 
in an humble sphere of life, it seemed that very 
little trouble had been taken with her education ; 
still, when I placed before her a book which she 
had never seen before, and desired her to point 
out different letters, she did so with readiness and 
accuracy, making no mistakes. She had never 



MIND AND MATTER. 51 

suffered from fits of any kind, nor were there 
any indications of cerebral disease or other phy- 
sical imperfection. Her parents said that from 
her earliest age she had been as she was when I 
saw her, equally intelligent, but incapable of 
speech. 

Eubulhs. The facts which you mention are 
very interesting ; and it seems to me that they 
throw light on at least some cases of stammering, 
in which we may suppose that the organ of 
speech is more or less imperfect, although it may 
be not altogether wanting. But let us go back 
to Dr. Hooke : he says — ■" I suppose memory to 
be as much an organ as the eye, ear, or nose, and 
to have its situation (in the brain) somewhere 
near the place where the nerves from the other 
senses concur and meet." He then goes on to 
explain in detail, that the soul, or first principle 
of life, though it be an incorporeal being, yet in 
performing its actions, makes use of corporeal 
organs ; that in the brain there is a repository 
of impressions made by the senses for the pur- 
pose of memory ; but that no idea can be stored 
up in this repository without the directing power 



52 MIND AND MATTEK. 

of the soul, and that this act of the soul is what 
is called attention. 

Ebgatbs. I am not prepared to admit, nor is 
it worth while to discuss, the explanation which 
Hooke has given of what goes on in the brain in 
connection with the memory, and other mental 
processes, it being for the most part fantastical, 
and unworthy of so great a philosopher ; but 
that he and others are correct in regarding me- 
mory as being in some way connected with our 
physical organization, there can be, I conceive, 
not the smallest doubt. 

The eye, the ear, and the other organs of 
sense, are physical instruments by means of 
which impressions are communicated through 
the nerves to the brain. Without this appara- 
tus, in our present state of existence, there would 
be no sensations ; no knowledge of any thing 
external to ourselves. It does not, however, fol- 
low that the brain itself feels, or that it performs 
any other than a subordinate office, conveying 
the impressions received from the organs of sense 
to a superior principle in connection with it. 
Memory is a recurrence of sensations, which ex- 



MIND AND MATTER. 53 

isted formerly, produced by the operation of 
some internal changes, after the causes, by which 
the first sensations were excited, have ceased to 
exist. These renewed sensations are (with some 
rare exceptions) fainter and less distinct than 
those in which they originated. There is also 
this difference between them, that the renewed 
sensations are subject to the influence of volition, 
vanishing at once on the slightest effort being 
made to direct the attention to anything else ; 
whereas we have no such power over the impres- 
sions which are made on our senses by the im- 
mediate presence of external objects. Notwith- 
standing these points of difference, it is plain 
that memory is closely allied to sensation, and 
the resemblance between the two orders of phe- 
nomena is so great as to justify the suspicion 
that the nervous system is instrumental in pro- 
ducing the one as well as the other ; while a 
multitude of facts show that the suspicion is well 
founded. A blow on the head may destroy the 
memory altogether, or (which is more usual) it 
may destroy it partially, or it may interrupt its 
exercise for a certain time, after which it may be 

5* 



54: MIND AND MATTER. 

gradually, or even suddenly, restored. After 
fever, also, and some other bodily ailments, the 
memory is not unfrequently impaired or lost. 
A gentleman found that he had lost the power 
of vision in one eye. Then he regained it par- 
tially in that eye, but lost it in the other. After- 
wards he partially regained it in the eye last 
affected. He could now see objects when placed 
in certain positions, so that the image might fall 
on particular parts of the retina, while he was 
still unable to see them in other positions. These 
facts sufficiently proved the existence of some 
actual disease. But observe what happened be- 
sides. His memory was affected as well as his 
sense of sight. Although in looking at a book 
he recognised the letters of the alphabet, he for- 
got what they spelled, and was under the neces- 
sity of learning again to read. Nevertheless, he 
knew his family and friends ; and his judgment, 
when the facts were clear in his mind, was 
perfect. 

In another case, a gentleman who had two 
years previously suffered from a stroke of apo- 
plexy (but recovered from it afterwards), was 



MIND AND MATTER. 55 

suddenly deprived of sensation on one side of his 
body. At the same time he lost the power, not 
only of expressing himself in intelligible lan- 
guage, but also that of comprehending what was 
said to him by others. He spoke what might 
be called gibberish, and it seemed to him that 
his friends spoke gibberish in return. But while 
his memory as to oral language was thus affected, 
as to written language it was not affected at all. 
If a letter was read to him, it conveyed no ideas 
to his mind ; but when he had it in his own hand, 
and read it himself, he understood it perfectly. 
After some time he recovered of this attack, as 
he had done of that of apoplexy formerly. He 
had another similar attack afterwards. 

A blow on the head which causes insensibility 
generally affects the memory so far that when 
the patient has recovered from the state of insen- 
sibility he has no knowledge of the accident. But 
in some instances the effect of a blow on the 
head is merely to disturb the memory, the other 
functions being unimpaired. A groom in the 
service of the Prince Regent was cleaning one 
of some horses sent as a present to His Royal 



56 MIND AND MATTER. 

Highness by the Shah of Persia. It was a 
vicious animal, and he kicked the groom on the 
head. The groom did not fall, nor was he at all 
stunned or insensible ; but he entirely forgot 
what he had been doing at the moment when 
the blow was inflicted. There was an in- 
terval of time, as it were, blotted out of his 
recollection. Not being able to account for it, 
he supposed that he had been asleep, and said 
so to his fellow servant, observing at the same 
time "that he must set to work to clean the 
horse, which he had neglected to clean in conse- 
quence of his having fallen asleep." 

In other cases the effect of a blow on the head 
has been not only to erase from the memory the 
events which immediately preceded the accident, 
but also to prevent it retaining the impression of 
those which occurred immediately afterwards. 
A young man was thrown from his horse in 
hunting. He was stunned, but only for a few 
minutes ; then recovered, and rode home in com- 
pany with his friends, twelve or thirteen miles, 
talking with them as usual. On the following 
day he had forgotten not only the accident itself, 



MIND AND MATTEK. 57 

but all that happened during his journey 
home. 

It would be easier to multiply examples such 
as these, both from my own experience, and from 
the observations of others : and from them it 
seems to be a legitimate conclusion, that the 
nervous system is instrumental in producing the 
phenomena of memory as well as those of sen- 
sation. They show also that it is not in every 
part of the nervous system, but in the brain, 
that memory resides. This faculty is injured by 
a blow on the head, or a disease aifecting the 
brain ; but not by an injury of the spine, or a 
disease of the spinal chord. The eyes may be 
amaurotic ; but Milton and Huber retained the 
memory of objects which they had seen pre- 
viously to their blindness. It is not the spinal 
chord, nor the nerves, nor the eye, nor the ear, ; 
but the brain, which is the store-house of past 
sensations, by referring to which the mind is 
enabled to renew its acquaintance with events 
which are passed, and at the same time to obtain 
the means of anticipating, to a great extent, the 
events which are to come. 



58 MIND AND MATTER. 

Crites. Your view of the matter then seems 
to be that impressions made on the organs of 
sense, and transmitted to the brain, produce some 
actual change in the minute organization of the 
latter, and that this is subservient, and, in our 
present state of existence, essential to, the me- 
mory. 

Ergates. I do not see how the facts which I 
have mentioned, and a hundred others which I 
might mention, can be otherwise explained. 
What the actual changes in the condition of the 
brain may be, it is impossible for us to compre- 
hend. Yet it is in no degree remarkable that 
such changes should take place. We see a tree 
which has been exposed for centuries to the heat 
of summer, and the cold of winter, and the influ- 
ence of the winds and tempests. Every change 
of temperature, every gust of wind, every storm 
of rain or hail, and probably even every change 
in the electric condition of the atmosphere, must 
have left its mark behind by producing some 
slight alteration in its root, and trunk, and 
branches. We recognise only the general re- 
sult, when we see the aged tree, with its fissured 



MIND AND MATTER. 59 

bark, and its branches inclined to that side from 
which it has been the least assailed by the wind. 
Bnt a being of superior knowledge, and possessed 
of the faculties necessary for more minute and 
accurate observation, would be able to distin- 
guish the effect of every individual impression 
made by the operation of the causes which have 
been enumerated, and of others more obscure. 

In offering these remarks, however, let me not 
be misapprehended as giving our knowledge for 
more than it is actually worth, or as pretending 
to understand more than we understand in 
reality. In our present state of existence, as the 
eye, the ear, the touch, and the other organs of 
sense, and, I may add, the action of our muscles, 
are the means by which we obtain a knowledge 
of things external to ourselves ; so it would ap- 
pear that the organization of the brain is made 
subservient to the function of memory. As to 
what there may be besides, or what may be the 
capabilities of the mental principle, independ- 
ently of organization ; or how much may belong 
to the one, and how much to the other, I do not 
pretend to offer an opinion. Here, as in other 



60 MIND AND MATTER. 

matters belonging to this order of inquiries, we 
may be sure that our actual knowledge goes very 
little way. " "We see these things through a glass 
darkly," and must be content humbly to acknow- 
ledge that the greater part is not only beyond 
the limits of our observation, but probably 
beyond those of our comprehension. 

There is, however, one other point which is 
not beyond the reach of our capacities, and 
which ought not to be left unnoticed. It is clearly 
not sufficient that an impression should be trans- 
mitted to the brain for it to be remembered. 
An act of the mind itself is necessary for that 
purpose ; and that, as Dr. Hooke has observed, 
is the act of attention. It is only a small propor- 
tion of what we see, or hear, or feel, or imagine, 
that is not immediately forgotten, simply because 
there are very few of these things to which we 
pay more than a momentary attention, while to 
many of them we pay no attention at all. Now, 
as Eubulus explained to us on a former occasion, 
attention implies volition ; that is, it is that effort 
of volition by which an object which would 
otherwise have immediately passed away, is kept 



MIND AND MATTER. 61 

present to the mind during a certain period of 
time. Sensation and volition are the two func- 
tions by means of which the mental principle is | 
enabled to maintain its communication with the 
external world. It is under the influence of 
volition that the contraction of muscles takes 
place for locomotion, speech, the procuring of 
food, and other purposes, and that the torpedo 
discharges his electric battery. Here there is an 
impulse communicated from the mind to the 
brain, from thence to the nerves, and from these 
to other organs, and producing a marked change 
in the condition of the latter ; and, & priori, there 
is no reason to doubt that the operation of a 
similar cause may produce an equal change, 
though of another kind, and more permanent, in 
the minute structure of the brain itself. 

Crites. If these views be correct, and if your 
speculation also be correct as to the existence of 
special organs in the brain for the purposes of 
locomotion and speech, it would appear proba- 
ble that there is a special organ for that of me- 
mory also. 

Ergates. That is true. But there our know- 

6 



62 MIND AND MATTER. 

ledge ends. "We may, I suppose, take it for 
granted that there is no animal whose memory 
is equally capacious with that of man ; and we 
know that, with the exception perhaps of the 
dolphin (of whose faculties we know nothing), 
there is no other animal in whom that portion 
of the cerebrum which we call its hemispheres, 
and which are bounded externally by the con- 
volutions, is equally developed. It may be said, 
and not without some show of reason — " Do not 
these facts seem to indicate where the faculty of 
memory resides?" "Willis answered the ques- 
tion in the affirmative.* But observe how it is 
in birds. In them there are no convolutions ; 
and the only part of the brain which can be said to 
correspond to the cerebral hemispheres of man, is 
merely a thin layer of cerebral substance expand- 
ed over some other structures which are developed 
to an enormous size. Yet we know that birds 
which are domesticated exhibit signs of consider- 

* "Multiplices cerebri plicas et convolutiones requiruntur, 
nempe ut in istis, tanquam in diversis cellulis et apothecis, sensi- 
bilium species reservari, atque illinc pro data, occasione evocari 
queant." — Willis de Anatonie Cerebri, cap. 10. 



MIND AND MATTEE. 63 

able memory, parrots and cockatoos recognising 
individuals after a long interval of time ; and that 
birds in their natural state return to their old 
haunts after their annual migrations. The ex- 
ploits of the carrier-pigeons cannot be explained 
without attributing to them no small powers of 
observation, and of recollecting what they had 
observed. Perhaps future observations on the 
effects produced by disease of the brain in con- 
nection with affections of the memory may throw 
some light on this mysterious subj ect. At present 
we must be content to acknowledge that we 
know nothing as to the locality of the function, 
nor of the minute changes of organization which 
are connected with it. 



THE THIED DIALOGUE. 

The Subject of Memory continued. — Sequence and Association of 
Ideas. — Suggestion of Ideas by internal Causes acting on the 
Brain by the Nerves, or through the Medium of the Blood. — 
Influence of Narcotics, Morbid Poisons, Lithic Acid, Impure 
Atmosphere, and other Physical Agents on the Condition 
of the Mind. — Such Inquiries not only of scientific Interest, 
but also of practical Importance. — Physical Causes of Mental 
Illusions. — Examples of false Perceptions referred to the Sight 
and other Senses. — Other forms of Illusion more frequent 
in Cases of Mental Aberration than mere Deceptions of the 
External Senses. — Mr. Locke's Definition of Insanity not 
sufficiently comprehensive. — A too rapid Succession of Ideas, 
with Incapability of fixing the Attention, incompatible with 
correct Reasoning. — State of Mind in the so called "Moral 
Insanity." — Question as to the Limits of Moral Responsibility. 

The conclusion of our journey had somewhat 
abruptly terminated our conversation. When we 
were assembled in the evening, the subject of it 
was thus resumed by Eubulus. 

Eubulus. Although some of the opinions 
which Ergates expressed this afternoon may be 
regarded as hypothetical, and not admitting of 
actual and positive proof, yet it must be owned 
that they are supported by many facts, and by 
some in addition to those which he has himself 
adduced. Especially his views as to the nature of 



MIND AND MATTER. 65 

memory seem to afford an explanation of some 
circumstances, relating to the connection of the 
mind with the body, which cannot well be ex- 
plained otherwise. 

For instance: we remember nothing of what 
occurred in infancy. That part of our life seems 
afterwards to be a blank in our existence ; and it 
is not unreasonable to suppose that the brain, 
like some other of the organs of the newly born 
child, is in an unfinished state, and, therefore, not 
fitted to retain the impressions made on it during 
any considerable period of time. 

Then the impressions made on the memory 
gradually become fainter and fainter as time 
elapses ; and this is in accordance with the gradual 
alteration which our physical structure undergoes 
as we advance in life. If there be exceptions to 
the rule, they are such as tend to prove the rule 
itself. For example, where the recollection of an 
event which occurred long ago is unusually vivid, 
we say, "it seems as if it had happened only 
yesterday," and, on the other hand, when the 
recollection of an event which occurred only 
lately is unusually faint, it appears to us at first 

6* 



66 MIND AND MATTER. 

that it happened long ago ; and it is only after 
some consideration, and by referring to some 
other circumstances in connection with it, that we 
are enabled to correct the error. 

Ekgates. Allow me to interrupt you for a 
moment by observing that, besides those which I 
have already mentioned (namely, diseases and 
injuries of the brain), there are other physical 
agents which prevent things, of which we are 
conscious at the time,- from being permanently 
impressed on the memory. Thus, a drunkard 
either forgets altogether, or has only a vague 
recollection of the nonsense which he talked, and 
the follies of which he was guilty, on the previous 
day while under the influence of alcohol; and 
those who, for the purpose of undergoing a 
surgical operation, are placed under the influence 
of what are called anaesthetic agents, as ether or 
chloroform, although in most instances they 
appear to pass into a state of entire insensibility, 
in other instances groan and struggle, and give 
evident signs of suffering while the operation 
lasts, although they remember nothing of it 
afterwards, and can scarcely be persuaded that 



MIND AND MATTER. 67 

what they had so much dreaded is really com- 
pleted. 

Eubulus. I cannot complain of the interrup- 
tion, as the facts which you mention are very 
much to the purpose. But I was going on to 
observe, in connection with our present inquiry, 
that, without denying the generally" received 
doctrines as to what metaphysicians have called 
the association or suggestion of ideas, still these 
do not explain the whole. How often does it 
happen that thoughts arise, and images present 
themselves to the mind, which cannot be traced 
as the immediate result of impressions on the 
external senses, or of anything that was passing 
in the mind previously. But may not this be 
explained by supposing that the brain, as the 
organ of memory, and therefore of the imagi- 
nation, is liable to be influenced by a variety of 
physical impressions communicated from other 
parts of the corporeal system besides the imme- 
diate organs of sense, through the medium of 
the nerves. "Whoever will carefully inquire into 
what passes within himself, will, I suspect, be 
satisfied that there are many of his thoughts, 



68 MIND AND MATTER. 

and trains of thought, and, I may add, of the 
agreeable or disagreeable feelings with which 
they are associated, that cannot be accounted 
for otherwise. 

Eegates. Dreams present some striking ex- 
amples of what you have now mentioned. You 
are awaked by a distressing dream, and find 
yourself laboring under the uncomfortable sen- 
sations occasioned by acid in your stomach. 
You take some magnesia, which will neutralise, 
or drink a glass of cold water, which will dilute, 
the acid, lie down again, and enjoy a refreshing 
sleep. A lady had a small tumor in one leg. 
It was hard, well defined, exquisitely tender, 
so that even a slight pressure on it occasioned a 
severe pain, not only at the instant, but lasting 
a considerable time afterwards. It seemed to be 
a tumor of a peculiar kind, well known to sur- 
geons as being occasionally found among the 
fibres of a nerve. This lady observed that she 
frequently awoke at night suffering from a 
frightful dream, which, although it related to 
some other and quite different subject, she 
could always trace to an accidental pressure 



MIND AND MATTER. 69 

on the tumor. In like manner children who 
labor under disease of the hip joint are often 
prevented from falling asleep by pains in the 
hip and knee, and painful startings of the limb ; 
but when they are asleep, instead of these local 
symptoms, they are tormented by distressing 
dreams. 

In cases such as these it is reasonable to sup- 
pose that the order of the phenomena is as fol- 
lows. An impression is made on a nerve, and 
from thence transmitted to the brain, producing 
in its minute structure certain changes, which 
affect the mind itself. But there is no doubt 
that the same effect may be produced without 
the intervention of the nerves, by the blood 
acting on the brain. Bichat has shown that the 
influence of the scarlet or arterial blood is neces- 
sary to the due performance of the cerebral 
functions. If dark-colored, or venous blood, be 
substituted for it, and transmitted to the brain by 
the arteries, the animal lapses, — I will not say into 
a state of unconsciousness, for of that we know 
nothing, — but into a state of total insensibility 
to external impressions. This fact being esta- 



70 MIND AND MATTER. 

blished, we cannot be surprised that blood of an 
improper quality, or containing something which 
healthy blood should not contain, may disturb 
the functions of the brain, so as even to affect 
the mind itself. The habitual opium-taker, while 
his favorite drug is circulating in his vessels, 
instead of being set asleep, is visited by soothing 
and luxurious thoughts, and enjoys the contem- 
plation of the great things which he ' means to 
accomplish, but which he never accomplishes in 
reality ; while the Malay, under the influence of 
the East Indian hemp, is thrown into a state of 
excitement, and runs a muck* A man has 
been exposed to the contagion of small-pox. A 
minute quantity of the poison introduced into 
the blood acts as what the chemists call a fer- 
ment, and occasions the generation in it of a 
larger quantity of poison similar to itself; and 
when a certain degree of accumulation of it has 
taken place, there is a severe attack of fever, and 
the mind probably is haunted by the phantasms 
of delirium. After a time the poison is ejected 
from the blood, and is found deposited in pustules 

* See Additional Note 0. 



MIND AND MATTER. 71 

on the surface of the skin, and simultaneously 
with the appearance of the eruption the fever 
subsides, and the delirium subsides with it. In 
a person who has the misfortune of inheriting a 
gouty habit, or who has (which is a much more 
common case) produced it in himself by a lazy 
and luxurious life, there is a superabundance of 
lithic acid in the blood. This fact has been esta- 
blished by the researches of Dr. Garrod. Then 
uncomfortable thoughts are presented to his 
mind ; he becomes fretful and peevish, a trouble 
to himself, and, if he be not trained to exercise a 
moral restraint over his thoughts and actions, a 
trouble to every one about him. After a while 
the poison, as it were, explodes : he has a severe 
attack of gout in his foot: he is placed on a 
more prudent diet ; the system is relieved of the 
lithic acid by which it was poisoned. Then the 
gout subsides ; happy and cheerful thoughts suc- 
ceed those by which the patient was previously 
tormented, and these continue until he has had 
the opportunity of relapsing into his former 
habits, and thus earning a fresh attack of the 
disease. 



72 MIND AND MATTER. 

There is nothing more interesting in philosophy, 
nor more important as to practical purposes, than 
a just appreciation of the influence which the 
body exercises over the conceptions and feelings 
of the mind. Certain conditions of the former 
induce certain conditions of the latter. This 
is one of the principal trials to which we are here 
subjected; and according to our original con- 
struction, and some circumstances extraneous to 
ourselves, the trial is greater to some of us than 
it is to others. The result may be for good or 
for evil ; and the practical question is, what can 
we do to promote the former, and lessen or 
prevent the latter ? A diseased condition of the 
blood, where a morbid poison, as that of the 
small-pox, or the more terrible one of hydropho- 
bia, has been admitted into it, will disturb the 
nervous system in spite of ourselves. But though 
this cannot, there is much that can, be helped. 
No one having the smallest capacity for observa- 
tion can doubt the vast influence which the 
condition of the body has on the temper, and 
even on the moral character. There are certain 
states of the general health in which the simplest 



MIND AND MATTER. 73 

impressions on the organs of sense may be 
transmitted to the sensorium with something 
superadded to them, which produces some kind 
of painful or uneasy feeling. There are others in 
which the effect is opposite to this. Hence 
we find one individual cheerful and hopeful 
under adversity, while another is unhappy and 
tired of life in the midst of all worldly prosperity. 
We are told, on high authority, of the necessity 
of self-control. We are also told how the effort 
of self-control may be rendered more easy by 
avoiding those sensual indulgences which tend to 
derange the functions of the animal system. 
This rule applies not merely to the profligate and 
the drunkard. There is many a person in whom 
a muddled intellect and a peevish temper may be 
traced to a too great indulgence of the appetite 
■ — to eating more than the stomach can digest; to 
drinking a bottle, or even half a pint of wine 
daily, and leading otherwise a lazy and luxurious 
life, but who would be found to have no con- 
temptible powers of mind, and cheerful spirits, if 
restricted to a more abstemious diet, and to drink- 
ing nothing more stimulating than toast and water. 

7 



74: MIND AND MATTER. 

" Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sand." 

We are all anxious to obtain rank, reputation, 
and wealth ; but that for which we have most 
reason to be anxious, not only for our own sake, 
but also for that of others, is such a state of our 
bodily functions as will enable us to make use of 
our higher faculties, and promote in us happy 
and contented feelings. Happiness, after all, is 
not so unequally distributed in this world as to a 
superficial observer it seems to be. Poverty 
is terrible if it be such as to prevent the obtain- 
ing the actual necessaries of life. But the agri- 
cultural laborer who has enough of wholesome 
food, and warm clothing for himself and his 
family, and who has the advantage, which cannot 
be too highly estimated, of living in the open air, 
has more actual enjoyment of life than the 
inheritor of wealth, living in a splendid mansion, 
who has too much of lithic acid in his blood. 

You will say that this is a worn-out tale. But 
let us pursue the subject further, and we shall 
find that it has extensive ramifications, questions 
arising out of it appertaining not only to indivi- 
duals, but to the whole fabric of society. Much 



MIND AND MATTER. . 75 

is said at present as to the necessity of extending 
education, as the means of improving the condi- 
tion of the multitude. I am not so great a 
heretic as to deny the advantages of knowledge 
and of early instruction, especially if it be com- 
bined with a proper training of the mind, so as 
to give the pupil habits of self-restraint. But' 
there is much to be desired besides. Nothing 
can tend more to every kind of moral and intel- 
lectual degradation than the vice of gin-drinking 
so prevalent in some, but not in all, of the lower 
classes of society. In a conversation which I had 
with a very intelligent person employed by the 
" City Missionary Society," whose location was 
in London among the inhabitants of St. Giles's 
parish, he said, "I assure you that there is 
scarcely any one of them who might not obtain 
a comfortable livelihood if he could leave off 
drinking gin." But see how one thing hangs 
upon another, and how one evil leads to another 
evil. Mr. Chadwick has shown that many are 
driven to drinking gin as affording a temporary 
relief to the feelings of depression and exhaustion 
produced by living in a noxious atmosphere; 



76 MIND AND MATTER. 

and he gives instances of individuals who had 
spontaneously abandoned the habit, when they 
were enabled to reside in a less crowded and 
more healthy locality, where they could breathe 
a pure air, instead of loathsome exhalations. The 
case of such persons is analogous to that of others, 
who become addicted to the use of opium, as the 
means of relief from bodily pain. Schools and 
churches are excellent things, but it is a vast 
mistake to suppose that they will do all that is 
required. There can be no feeling of content- 
ment where there is an insufficient supply of 
wholesome food ; and the " Temperance Society " 
can make few converts among those who live in 
crowded buildings, unventilated, and with imper- 
fect drainage. Our late legislation has accom- 
plished much, and probably as much as it can 
reasonably be expected to accomplish, towards 
the attainment of the first of these objects ; and 
measures are now in progress which justify the 
expectation that eventually much good may be 
done in the other direction also. 

Ceites. If such causes as those to which you 
lately referred may produce the effects which 



MESTD AND MATTEK. 71 

you have described ; if an unhealthy state of the 
blood may give rise to delirium in fever, or illu- 
sions and horrors of mind in hydrophobia ; if 
opium fills the mind with luxurious thoughts 
and visions having no foundation in reality ; is 
it not probable that those greater and more per- 
manent distractions of the mind which constitute 
the various forms of mental alienation may be 
traced to similar causes, that is, to some physical 
derangement affecting the organ of memory, and 
thus disturbing the imagination ? 

Eegates. I cannot doubt that mental alien- 
ation is generally the result of some wrong 
condition of the body, either functional or organic. 
Whether there be any exceptions to this rule, it 
would require more actual knowledge and ex- 
perience of the subject than I pretend to possess, 
and more thought than I have bestowed on it, to 
enable me to determine. Probably there is 
no degree of knowledge, which it is in the power 
of man to attain, which could enable us to give a 
positive answer to this question. Putting it 
aside, however, for the present, there are abundant 
proofs that impressions may be made on the 



78 MIND AND MATTER. 

brain by other causes simulating those which are 
made on it by external objects through the 
medium of the organs of sense, thus producing 
false perceptions, which may, in the first instance, 
and before we . have had time to reflect on the 
subj ect, be mistaken for realities. I have, indeed, 
already furnished an example of this in the 
visions presented to us in our dreams under the 
influence of physical causes. 

Ceites. I have been accustomed to believe 
that the latter are not, in reality, different from 
the objects commonly presented to us by the 
memory and the imagination ; but seeming to be 
more distinct than usual, because during sleep 
we have no real objects with which we can 
compare them; in the same manner as the 
deception of a panorama depends in part on the 
circular form of the painting, which excludes 
real objects from the view. 

Eegates. In the visions belonging to our 
dreams there must be more than what you. 
mention. A friend of mine, on awaking in the 
morning, perceived what seemed to be a human 
figure in a sort of Persian dress, standing at the 



MIND AND MATTER. 79 

foot of his bed. It was as distinct as the chairs 
and tables in the room, so that my friend was on 
the point of going up to it, that he might ascer- 
tain what, or rather who, it was. Looking, 
however, steadfastly at it, he observed that, 
although the figure was as plain as possible, the 
door behind it was plainly to be seen also, and 
presently the figure disappeared. Considering 
the matter afterwards, he recollected that he had 
had a dream, in which the Persian figure played 
a conspicuous part; and thus the whole was 
satisfactorily explained, it being evident that the 
dream, as far as this part of it was concerned, had 
continued after he was awake, and so that the 
perception of the imaginary object had existed 
simultaneously with that of the real ones. The 
same thing occurred to the same person on another 
occasion, and similar histories have been related 
to me by others. It is probable that this is the 
history of many startling and mysterious tales of 
ghosts and spirits. 

But phantoms similar to those which belong to 
dreams, and which like them do not vanish 
by an effort of the will, may, under certain 



80 MIND AND MATTER. 

circumstances, present themselves to those who 
are really awake. They may be the result of 
some actual organic disease of the brain. A 
gentleman, eighty years of age, had been for 
some time laboring under hypochondriasis, at- 
tended with other indications of cerebral disease. 
On a cold clay in winter, while at church, he had 
a fit, which was considered to be apoplectic. 
He was taken home and bled, and recovered his 
consciousness, not being paralytic afterwards. 
He died, however, in a few days after the attack. 
During this interval, though having the perfect 
use of his mental faculties, he was haunted by 
the appearance of men and women, sometimes in 
one dress, sometimes in another, coming into and 
loitering in the room. They were so distinct 
that, at first, he always mistook them for realities, 
and wondered that his family should have allowed 
such persons to intrude themselves upon him. 
But he soon, by a process of reasoning, corrected 
this error, and then talked of them as he would 
have talked of the illusions of another person. 
Tou have probably read the history of Nicolai, 
the bookseller of Berlin, who was haunted by 



MIND AND MATTER. 81 

visions of persons coming into his apartment, 
sitting down, and even conversing with him and 
with each other, and this during a period of 
several months. He also was at first taken 
by surprise, believing the phantoms to be real 
objects ; but was soon enabled to convince him- 
self that they were not so. His recovery was 
attributed to an improved state of his bodily 
health. I must not weary you by referring to 
other instances of the same kind. The late Dr. 
Alderson, in an essay which he published nearly 
fifty years ago, gave an account of several which 
had occurred 5 under his own observation, in 
individuals of perfectly sane minds,* and others 
have been since then recorded by other authors. 
Examples of deceptive appearances analogous 
to these, but less remarkable, are not very un- 
common. A gentleman of my acquaintance, of 
a very sensitive and imaginative turn of mind, 
informed me that, not unfrequently, when he 
had had his thoughts intensely fixed for a con- 
siderable time on an absent or imaginary object, 
he had at last seen it projected on the opposite 

* An Essay on Apparitions, by John Alderson, M.D. 



82 MIND AND MATTER. 

wall, though only for a brief space of time, with 
all the brightness and distinctness of reality. 

Ceites. If such a person had the misfortune 
to lose one of his family or a dear friend by 
death, how easy would it be for him to believe 
that he had been visited by his apparition after- 
wards! It is probable that when Swedenborg 
supposed that he met Moses or Elias in the 
street, some such object was really presented to 
his mind ; and that even Joanna Southcote, and 
others who have been regarded as a low order of 
impostors, were not altogether impostors, but in 
part the victims of their own imaginations. The 
subject is one which may well excite our curi- 
osity, and I should be glad to obtain some further 
insight into it. Under what circumstances do 
these visions, so like those of our dreams, present 
themselves to the waking person? Where do 
they really exist, and what is their origin ? 

Ekgates. I have already stated that in the 
instance which I quoted on my own authority 
the existence of actual disease of the brain was 
indicated by other symptoms. I have also men- 
tioned that in that of the bookseller of Berlin 



MIND AND MATTER. 83 

there was a deranged state of the general health, 
and that he recovered under a course of medical 
treatment. In all the cases recorded by Dr. 
Alderson, the appearances were connected with 
actual bodily disease, which in two of them was 
of such a nature as especially to affect the ner- 
vous system. "We may suppose the part actually 
affected to be the expansion of the nerve of sight 
in the retina of the eye ; but it is more probable 
that it is that part of the brain itself which 
belongs to vision. In confirmation of this opinion, 
I may refer to a case recorded by Esquirol. A 
Jewess, who had been for a long time blind, 
became insane. Her illusions were of the sight, 
and she was constantly haunted by strange 
visions. After her death it was ascertained that 
the two optic nerves, from the part at which 
they are united within the head (which anato- 
mists call their commissure) to their termination 
in the retinae, were shrunk and wasted, so that 
they must have been wholly incapable of per- 
forming their functions.* I may also refer to 
another case which came under my own observ- 

* Des Malades Mentales, vol. i. p. 195, edit. 1838. 



84 MIND AND MATTEK. 

ation. A man met with an injury of the head, 
which, as the event proved, occasioned an exten- 
sive fracture in the basis of the skull, with such 
a displacement of bone as to press on the optic 
nerves, and render them wholly incapable of 
transmitting impressions to the brain. He was 
totally blind: otherwise he was not insensible, 
though he was slow in giving answers, and 
peevish when disturbed. On the second day 
after the accident, there were manifest symptoms 
of inflammation of the brain. He was in a state 
of great excitement, delirious, believing that he 
saw objects which did not exist; and he con- 
tinued in this state until within a short period 
of his death. 

Cbites. You have spoken of deceptions of 
the sight. Does nothing like this happen as to 
the other senses ? 

Eegates. Certainly it does. The phantoms 
by which ]STicolai was haunted are said to have 
conversed sometimes with him, sometimes with 
each other. I know a person, who amid the 
din of London streets occasionally has the per- 
ception of his being called by his name, so that 



MIND AND MATTER. 85 

he involuntarily turns round to see who calls 
him. Sir Henry Holland has given an account 
of a much more remarkable case. A gentleman 
had symptoms of an affection of the brain, which 
was attributed to an accidental blow on the 
head. On the following day he had pretty well 
recovered. Two days afterwards he was well 
enough to drive out in his carriage. But now, 
"for the first time after the accident, there came 
on the singular lusus of two voices, seemingly 
close to his ear, in rapid dialogue, unconnected 
with any present occurrence, and almost without 
meaning."* It is not uncommon to find persons, 
who, when their attention is not otherwise occu- 
pied, are distressed by the sound of bells ringing. 
A gentleman, having what is commonly called a 
highly nervous temperament, had some teeth 
drawn while under the influence of chloroform. 
From that time, whenever his mind was not 
otherwise engaged, he was tormented by sounds 
as if a number of persons were yelling and 
hooting him. I have been told of a great musical 
genius, who, from the earliest period of his life, 

* Medical Notes and Reflections, 2nd edit. p. 232. 

8 



86 MIND AND MATTES. 

has never been without the sounds of music of 
the most harmonious kind. Then as to the other 
senses. I remember a man who had a severe 
blow on the head, occasioning the symptoms 
which surgeons attribute to a concussion of the 
brain. He recovered- from the other conse- 
quences of the injury ; but for a long time after- 
wards everything that he ate had a bitter taste. 
The case of another person who had a constant 
sensation as if a burning coal had been applied 
to his arm belongs to the same class. 

Ceites. But are not all such cases as those 
which you have described, to be considered, as 
examples of mental derangement, though not 
in its worst and most aggravated form? and 
does not this correspond with the view of the 
subj ect taken by Locke, who regards this disease 
as affecting the imagination only, and not at all 
the reasoning faculty ? 

Eegates. Certainly not ; for with the excep- 
tion of Swedenborg, no one of the individuals 
whom I have just now mentioned mistook the 
deceptions as being connected with real objects. 
It is true, that some of those who are the subjects 



MIND AND HATTEK. 87 

of mental derangement may see phantoms and 
hear strange voices ; but they believe them to 
be realities, and cannot be persuaded that they 
are otherwise. Besides, as I am led to believe, 
it is not by this class of illusions that they are 
most liable to be tormented. As a morbid con- 
dition of the brain may produce the impression 
of visible objects, or of voices, which have no 
real existence, so it may also produce notions of 
a more complex and abstract character, and 
these may be constantly obtruded on the mind, 
so that the individual is unable to withdraw his 
attention from them, being, as it would seem, as 
much beyond the influence of volition as the 
muscles of a paralytic limb. Thus, one person 
believes himself to be ruined as to his worldly 
affairs, and that he and his family, though really 
in affluence, are reduced to extreme poverty; 
while another is persuaded that he is in posses- 
sion of unbounded wealth, the consequence being 
that he is in danger of being ruined by extrava- 
gance ; and a third is under the apprehension of 
his being accused of some dreadful crime, and 
perhaps seeks a refuge from his . fears in self- 



4*> 



88 MIND AND MATTEE. 

destruction. It is more difficult to escape from 
the latter than from the former class of illusions, 
as the appeal lies not from one sense to another, 
but to a more refined process of thought and 
reflection, and the examination of evidence. 

"With regard to the opinion of Mr. Locke 
(and I beg of you to observe that I speak not 
pretending to have any practical knowledge of 
the subject, but viewing it merely as a physio- 
logist), I own that it seems to me that he has 
laid down the rule too broadly, and that his 
explanation will not include the whole pheno- 
mena of insanity. In many insane persons, in 
addition to the illusions under which they labor, 
the capability of fixing the attention is almost 
entirely destroyed. The mind hurries on from one 
thing to another, as if it could find no resting- 
place ; and under these circumstances it is plain 
that correct reasoning, which Locke defines as 
"the perception of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of our ideas," is out of the question. At 
the same time, this does not prove that the 
reasoning faculty is primarily affected. The 
increased intensity of the action of the nervous 



MIND AND MATTER. 89 

system, and the imperfect subjection of it to the 
will, sufficiently explain the whole. In one case, 
the mind may be occupied with a single object, 
or a single idea, or combination of ideas. In 
another case, a constant and rapid succession of 
different, and perhaps heterogeneous, ideas is 
presented to it : and the will is equally powerless 
to dismiss the single idea in the former case, 
and to stop the current of different ideas in the 
latter.* 

* The explanation of the so-called "biological," or "electro- 
biological " phenomena, as given by the eminent English physio- 
logist, Dr. Carpenter, illustrates in a remarkable manner the 
influence of suggestion on the mind, as modifying and directing 
muscular movement independent of volition. 

Dr. C. says: — "All the phenomena of the 'biologised' state, 
when attentively examined, will be found to consist in the occu- 
pation of the mind by the ideas which have been suggested to it, 
and in the influence which those ideas exert upon the actions of 
the body. Thus, the operator asserts, that the 'subject' can- 
not rise from his chair, or open his eyes, or continue to hold a 
stick; and the 'subject' thereby becomes so completely pos- 
sessed with the fixed belief of the impossibility of the act, that 
he is incapacitated from executing it, not because his will is 
controlled by that of another, but because his will is in abeyance, 
and his muscles are entirely under the guidance of his ideas. 

8* 



90 . MIND AND MATTEE. 

In* confirmation of these views, it may be 
observed, that mental derangement is in nume- 
rous instances preceded by a disordered state of 

So, again, when he is made to drink a glass of water and is as- 
sured that it is coffee, or wine, or milk, that assurance, delivered 
in a decided tone, makes a stronger impression on his mind than 
that which he receives through Ms taste, smell or sight ; and, not 
being able to judge and compare, he yields himself up to the 
' dominant idea.' The same with what has been designated as 
'control over the memory.' The subject is assured that he 
cannot remember the most familiar thing, his own name for 
example ; and he is prevented from doing so, not by the will of 
the operator, but by the conviction of the impossibility of the 
mental act, which engrosses his own mind, and by the want of 
that voluntary control over the direction of his thoughts which 
alone can enable him to recall the desiderated impression. The 
same with the abolition of the sense of personal identity. Now, 
almost every one of these peculiar phenomena has its parallel 
in states of mind whose existence is universally admitted. Thus, 
the complete subjection of the muscular power to the ' dominant 
idea ' is precisely what is experienced in nightmare ; in which 
we are prevented from moving so much as a finger, notwithstan- 
ding a strong desire to do so, by the conviction that the least 
movement is impossible. The misinterpretation of sensory impres- 
sions is continually seen in persons who are subject to absence 
of mind, who make the most absurd mistakes as to what they see 
or hear, taste or feel, in consequence of the pre-occupation of the 
mind by some train of thought which renders them unable rightly 



MIND AND MATTER. 91 

the general health ; and that it is not uncommon 
to find it alternating with diseases which affect 
merely the corporeal functions; or occurring 

to appreciate the objects around them. In such persons, too, the 
memory of the most familiar thing — as the absent man's own 
name, for example, or that of his most intimate friend — is often 
in abeyance for a time ; and it requires but a more complete 
obliteration of the consciousness of the past, through the entire 
possession of the mind by the intense consciousness of the present, 
to destroy the sense of personal identity. This, indeed, we often 
do in effect lose in ordinary dreaming and reverie. The essential 
characteristic of both these states, as of the ' biological ' condi- 
tion, is, the suspension of voluntary control over the current of 
thought, so that the ideas follow one another suggestively ; and 
however strange or incongruous their combinations or sequences 
may appear, we are never surprised at them, because we have lost 
the power of referring to our ordinary experience. There is one 
phenomenon of the ' biological ' state, which has been considered 
pre-eminently to indicate the power of the operator's will over his 
subject; namely, the induction of sleep, and its spontaneous 
determination at a given time previously ordained, or by the 
sound of the operator's voice, and that only. It is well known 
that the expectation of sleep is one of the most powerful means 
of inducing it, especially when combined with the withdrawal of 
the mind from everything else which could keep its attention 
awake ; both these conditions are united in an eminent degree in 
the state of the biologised subject whose mind has been pos-^ 
sessed with the conviction that sleep is about to supervene, and 



92 MIND AND MATTER. 

under other circumstances which show that it 
must have been the result of mere physical 
agencies. 

Eubulus. You have certainly adduced facts 
which justify the opinion that mental derange- 
ment may be, and for the most part is, the result 
of some actual physical imperfection, which we 
may suppose to be functional in some instances, 
organic in others ; and I own that this is to me 
a very acceptable and consolatory view of the 
subject. But you cannot deny that in many 
instances it may be traced just as plainly to the 
operation of moral causes. The mind may break 
down all at once under some sudden affliction; 

is closed to every source of distraction. The waking at a particular 
time may also be explained by the influence of expectation. Thus, 
however strange the phenomena of the ' biological ' state may at 
first sight appear, there is not one of them which, when closely scru- 
tinized, is not found to be essentially conformable to facts whose 
genuineness every physiologist and psychologist is ready to admit. 
It is not, however, in any large proportion of individuals that 
this state can be induced ; probably not more than one in twenty, 
or at most one in twelve. Males appear equally susceptible of it 
with females ; so that it cannot be fairly set down as a variety 
of ' hysterical ' disorder." 



MIND AND MATTEK. 93 

or it may yield more gradually where the atten- 
tion has been long and constantly and anxiously 
directed to some matter of unusual interest ; and 
thus, the apprehension of poverty, the excitement 
arising from the unexpected possession of wealth, 
a gloomy and unholy religion, or a long indul- 
gence in dreams of vanity and pride, may upset 
a vigorous intellect. Such facts as these cannot 
be questioned — and is not the conclusion from 
them inevitable ? 

Ergates. I am quite aware that mental de- 
rangement may in many instances be traced to 
moral causes as its original source, and far be it 
from me to assert that the one indivisible percipi- 
ent and thinking being, which each of us feels him- 
self to be, may not be in itself liable to changes, 
independently of any previous change in the 
material structure with which it is associated. 
Still, in the facts which you have mentioned, 
there is nothing to contradict the opinion that 
the essence of the disease, even when produced 
by the operation of moral causes, may be in the 
nervous system. A physician, whose knowledge 
of these subjects is not surpassed by that of any 



94 MIND AND MATTEK. 

one in Europe, assures me that " when mental 
derangement seems to be induced by moral 
causes, it is generally to be presumed that there 
was originally an imperfect state of the brain, 
forming a predisposition to the disease." Then 
be it observed, that as the brain may influence 
the mind, so may the mind influence the brain. 
It is in this manner that volition, acting on the 
brain first, and on the nerves afterwards, pro- 
duces muscular contractions ; that grief causes 
tears to flow from the lachrymal gland ; and that 
the mouth becomes parched, and the digestion of 
the food interrupted, as a part of the consequences 
of mental anxiety. So, also, persons have been 
known to suffer from imaginary hydrophobia, 
experiencing not a few of the symptoms of that 
terrible disease. In such cases the mind is affect- 
ed first, the nervous system afterwards; the 
latter re-acting on the mind, and confirming and 
continuing the illusion. If the functions of the 
brain should be thus disturbed during a very 
long period of time, it seems not improbable 
that some actual change will at last be produced 
in its organization; and indeed, it is not very 



MIND AND MATTER. 95 

easy otherwise to understand how mental de- 
rangement, induced by moral causes, should be 
permanent, when the causes themselves have 
been in operation only for a limited period. Nor 
is there in this anything more remarkable than 
the fact of organic disease of the heart being in 
some instances distinctly to be traced to anxiety 
of mind. 

Ckites. All this is to me a matter of curious 
speculation; but it leads to another subject, 
in which I feel a still greater interest ; partly 
because, from the special nature of my pursuits, 
it is sometimes forced on my attention ; and partly 
because out of it arise questions, which, as they 
affect our social system, are of great practical im- 
portance to us all. Some writers have described, 
under the name of Moral or Instinctive Insanity, 
a state of mind in which they say that there are 
no illusions, nor any affection of the intellect, 
but in which there is simply a perversion of the 
moral sentiments ; the individual laboring under 
an impulse to perform certain extravagant and 
outrageous acts, injurious to himself or others; 
such impulse being irresistible, so that he is to 



96 MIND AND HATTEK. 

be held as being no more responsible for his 
conduct than an ordinary lunatic. ]STow I own 
that, looking at the question merely as one who 
has some knowledge of human nature, and with 
no other aid than that of my own common sense, 
I am very much inclined to doubt the correctness 
of this doctrine, and I am certain that it is danger- 
ous to admit the plea of irresponsibility for those 
who labor under this so-called Moral Insanity, 
to the extent to which Dr. Pritchard and others 
have claimed it for them. Observe, that I use 
the term Moral Insanity, not as comprehending 
cases in which there is a belief in things that do 
not exist in reality, or cases of idiotcy, or those 
approaching to idiotcy; but limiting it strictly 
and exclusively to the definition given by writers 
on the subject. The law makes a reasonable 
allowance of time for the subsiding of passion 
suddenly provoked. But we are not, therefore, 
to presume that the same allowance is to be 
made for those in whom a propensity to set 
fire to their neighbors' houses, or commit mur- 
der, is continued for months, or weeks, or even 
for hours. Is it true that such persons are really 



MIND AND MATTER. 97 

so regardless of the ill consequences which may 
arise, so incapable of the fear of punishment, 
and so absolutely without the power of self- 
restraint, as they have been sometimes repre- 
sented to be ? If not, there is an end of their . 
want of responsibility. Let me refer here to the 
instance of the gouty patient, some time since 
adduced by Ergates. Under the influence of 
his disease every impression made on his nervous 
system is attended with uneasy sensations. If 
such a person has exerted himself to acquire the 
habit of self-control, the evil ends with himself; 
but otherwise, he is fractious and peevish ; flies 
into a passion, without any adequate cause, with 
those around him, and uses harsh words which 
the occasion does not justify ; conduct of which 
he can offer to himself no explanation, except 
that he cannot help it ; and for which, if he be a 
right-minded person, he is sorry afterwards. If 
he were to yield to the impulse of his temper so 
far as to inflict on another a severe bodily injury, 
ought it to be admitted as an excuse, that Dr. 
G-arrod had examined his blood, and found in it 
too large a proportion of lithic acid ? Yet when 

9 



98 MIND AND MATTER. 

the boy Oxford yielded to what was probably a 
less violent impulse, which caused him to endea- 
vor to take away the life of the Queen, the jury 
acquitted him, on the ground of his being the 
subject of "Moral Insanity." It seems to me 
that juries have not unfrequently been misled by 
the refinements of medical witnesses, who, having 
adopted the theory of a purely moral insanity, 
have applied that term to cases to which the term 
insanity ought not to be applied at all. It is true, 
that the difference in the character of individuals 
may frequently be traced to difference in their 
organizations, and to different conditions as to 
bodily health ; and that, therefore, one person has 
more, and another has less difficulty in control- 
ling his temper, and regulating his conduct. But 
we have all our duties to perform, and one of the 
most important of these is, that we should strive 
against whatever evil tendency there may be in 
us arising out of our physical constitution. Even 
if we admit (which I do not admit in reality) 
that the impulse which led Oxford to the com- 
mission of his crime was at the time irresistible, 
still the question remains, whether, when the 



MIND AND MATTER. 99 

notion of it first haunted him, he might not have 
kept it under his control; and thus prevented 
himself from passing into that state of mind 
which was beyond his control afterwards. If I 
have been rightly informed, Oxford was himself 
of this opinion ; as he said, when another attempt 
had been made to take away the life of the 
Queen, " that if he himself had been hanged this 
would not have happened." We have been told 
of a very eminent person who had acquired the 
habit of touching every post that he met with in 
his walks, so that at last it seemed to be a part 
of his nature to do so ; and that if he found that 
he had inadvertently passed by a post without 
touching it, he would actually retrace his steps 
for the purpose. I knew a gentleman who was 
accustomed to mutter certain words to himself 
(and they were always the same words), even in 
the midst of company. He died at the age of 
ninety, and I believe that he had muttered these 
words for fifty or sixty years. These were foolish 
habits ; but they might have been mischievous. 
To correct them at last would have been a very 
arduous undertaking. But might not this have 



100 MEND AND MATTER. 

been easily done in the beginning ? and if- so — ■ 
if instead of touching posts, or muttering unmean- 
ing words, these individuals had been addicted 
to stealing or stabbing,— ought they to have been 
considered as absolved from all responsibility? 
It has been observed by a physician, who has 
had large opportunities of experience in these 
matters, that " a man may allow his imagination 
to dwell on an idea until it acquires an unhealthy 
ascendancy over his intellect."* And surely, if, 
under such circumstances, he were to commit a 
murder, he ought to be held as a murderer, and 
would have no more claim to be excused than a 
man who has voluntarily associated with thieves 
and murderers until he has lost all sense of right 
and wrong ; and much less than one who has had 
the misfortune of being born and bred among 
such malefactors. 

Eegates. I have no doubt, as you have ex- 
pressed it, that those who have maintained the 
doctrine of " Moral Insanity," have often applied 
that term to cases to which the name of Insanity 
ought not to have been applied at all. But I 

* Anatomy of Suicide, by Forbes Winslow, M.D. 



MIND AND MATTER. 101 

also have no doubt that there has been much 
mystification of the subject, by the application 
of the same term to other cases in which illusions 
really existed, and which might, therefore, have 
been more properly classed with cases of ordinary 
mental aberration. At the same time, we must 
not overlook the fact that there may be, and 
sometimes is, a real difficulty in determining 
whether a man who abandons himself to an evil 
passion, or a mischievous or absurd propensity, 
labors under illusions or not. For example : a 
disease has been described under "the name of 
Bulimia, in which the patient is affected with 
an inordinate appetite, which nothing can satiate, 
and which his will seems, powerless to resist. 
One individual, whose case is recorded in the 
Transactions of the Royal Society, would eat an 
ordinary leg of veal at a single meal, adding to it 
a store of sow-thistles, and other wild vegetables.* 
Another would devour raw, and even living cats, 
rats, and dogs, the entrails of animals, and candles, 
to the extent of fourteen pounds daily, f Now, 

* Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxii. 
f London Medical and Physical Journal. 

9* 



102 MIND AND MATTER. 

except that the passion has another object, there 
seems to be no essential difference between these 
cases and that of a man who squanders his 
property, purchasing articles for which he has 
no use, and which he immediately lays aside, 
reckless of the ruin which he is bringing on 
himself, his wife, and children. But it may be 
urged, on the other hand, that in Bulimia the 
sense of hunger, where food is not really required, 
and which nothing can allay, may not improperly 
be regarded as an illusion ; having, at any rate, 
a considerable resemblance to the visions, voices, 
or unfounded conceits, which haunt the imagina- 
tion of an ordinary lunatic. 

Ckites. There seems to be some truth in this 
comparison. But let us suppose that your patient 
with Bulimia were to be in the habit of robbing 
butchers' shops and larders, ought he to be con- 
sidered as not being responsible for his actions, 
because he was driven to do so by his inordinate 
appetite ? And this leads me to offer one farther 
observation. If we are not to confound merely 
mischievous propensities with illusions, we are 
also not to admit the mere existence of an illusion, 



as 



MISTD AND MATTER. 103 



being in all cases an excuse for crime. A 



thorough-going Socialist may be conscientious- 
ly persuaded that the unequal distribution of 
property is contrary to religion and morality. 
The conviction may be so strong that he not 
only disregards, but cannot comprehend, the 
arguments which satisfy men of sober sense that 
his views are erroneous and absurd. Is this 
anything more or less than an illusion ; and if, 
under its influence, he were to appropriate to 
himself his neighbor's property, or abet others 
in taking it for themselves, is he, therefore, to be 
regarded as not responsible for what he does ? it 
being borne in mind that the object of human 
punishment is, not to revenge society on the 
malefactors, but to deter others from following 
their example. There are many dogs whose 
natural and original instinct leads them to run 
after and kill sheep ; but a proper discipline 
teaches them that they are not to do so, and 
counteracts the instinct. There are, undoubtedly, 
instances without number of illusions, which not 
only have a firmer hold on the human mind than 
this particular instinct in dogs, but which neither 



104 MIND AND MATTER. 

argument nor discipline can remove or even con 
trol : but it is not so in other cases ; and surely 
there is no reason why those of the latter class 
should not be overruled by means analogous to 
those which overrule the instinct, of the brute. 
Dr. Mayo, whose attention has been directed, 
with much success, to this class of inquiries, has 
arrived at this conclusion, and I do not see how 
any one can well differ from the opinion which 
he has expressed.* 

Eubttlus. Believing as I do, with Crites, that 
the subject which you are now discussing is one 
of great importance as it affects society at large, 
I have listened with much interest to the observa- 
tions which you have made. You, Crites, have 
pointed out the necessity of not confounding, as 
has been sometimes done, mischievous or absurd 
propensities, however strong, with actual insanity. 
You, Ergates, have endeavored to show that 
there is no broad line, by which the former can 
always be distinguished from the latter ; and I 
am inclined to agree with both of you. But I also 
cannot but assent to the opinion of Crites, when 

* See Additional Note D. 



MIND AND MATTES. 105 

he farther stated that the existence of illusions is 
not in every instance to be regarded as justifying 
the plea of want of responsibility. It certainly 
seems to me to be not less absurd in itself than it 
is dangerous to society at large, to hold that any 
one, whom the dread of being punished might 
deter from the commission of crime, is not a 
fit subject for punishment. At the same time I 
fully admit that a more or less unsoundness of 
mind may afford a sufficient reason for commut- 
ing, or modifying, the nature of the penalty. 
Allow me to add, that it is a very great mistake 
to suppose that this is a question which can be 
determined only by medical practitioners. Any 
one of plain common sense, and having a fair 
knowledge of human nature, who will give it due 
consideration, is competent to form an opinion 
on it, and it belongs fully as much to those whose 
office it is to administer the law, as it does to the 
medical profession. 

In connexion with the subjects discussed in this 
chapter by Sir B. Brodie, the following letter ad- 
dressed by the eminent French savant, Chevreuil, 
in 1833, to his friend Ampere, the celebrated elec- 
trician and physicist, will be read with interest. In 



106 MIND AND MATTER. 

this letter, M. Chevreuil discusses the influence of the 
mind on muscular and nervous action, particularly 
in reference to the asserted fact that a pendulum 
formed by a heavy body and a flexible string would 
oscillate, when held by the hand over certain sub- 
stances, although the arm should remain perfectly 
stationary. — Am. Ed. 

" The pendulum I used was an iron ring suspen- 
ded by a flaxen thread ; it had been arranged by 
a person who was very anxious that I should verify 
for myself the phenomenon which appeared when it 
was placed over water, a block of metal, or a living 
being — a phenomenon which I saw appear in his 
hands. It was not, I confess, without surprise that 
I saw it reproduced when, having taken hold with 
my right hand of the pendulum's string, I placed it 
above the mercury reservoir of my air-pump, an 
anvil, several animals, &c. I concluded from my 
experiments that, as I was informed there were 
only a certain number of bodies apt to determine 
the oscillations of the pendulum, it might be that, 
in interposing other bodies between the former and 
the pendulum, the oscillations would cease. 

" Notwithstanding my presumption, my astonish- 
ment was great when, after having taken with my 
left hand a plate of glass or a cake of resin, &c, and 
having placed these bodies between the mercury 
and the pendulum which oscillated over it, I saw 
the oscillations diminish in length and then wholly 
cease. They recommenced when the intermediate 
body was taken away, and again ceased upon its 
re-interposition. This succession of phenomena was 



MIND AND MATTBE. 107 

repeated a great many times, with a really remarka- 
ble constancy, whether the intermediate "body was 
held by me or by any other person. 

" The more extraordinary these effects seemed to 
me, the more necessary I felt the importance of 
verifying that they were foreign to all muscular 
motion of the arm, as I had been informed they 
were, in the most positive manner. This induced 
me to lean my right arm, which held the pendulum, 
upon a wooden support, which at intervals I gra- 
dually advanced from my shoulder to my hand, and 
brought back from my hand to my shoulder. I soon 
noticed that in the first circumstance the motion of 
the pendulum decreased in proportion as the sup- 
port was placed near the hand, and that it ceased 
when the fingers which held the thread were them- 
selves supported, whereas in the second case the 
contrary effect took place. 

" This induced me to think that it was very proba- 
ble that a muscular motion which took place unknown 
to me determined the phenomena ; and I was the 
more inclined to take this opinion into consideration 
as I had a souvenir, vague in truth, of having been 
in a certain state when my eyes followed the oscil- 
lations described by the pendulum which I held in 
my hand. 

" I made the experiments spoken of above over 
again, my arm being entirely free, and I convinced 
myself that the souvenir just spoken of was not an 
illusion of my mind, for I felt very distinctly that, 
while my eyes followed the oscillations of the pendu- 
lum, there was in me a disposition or tendency to 



108 MIND AND MATTER. 

the motion, which, involuntary as it seemed to be, 
was the better satisfied as the pendulum described 
larger arcs ; consequently, I thought that if I had 
repeated the experiments, first taking care to blind- 
fold my eyes, the results would be very different 
from those observed. It happened so exactly. 
While the pendulum oscillated above the mercury, 
a blindfold was placed over my eyes; the motion 
soon diminished ; but, although the oscillations were 
feeble, they were not sensibly diminished by the 
interposition of the bodies, which seemed to have 
arrested them in my first experiments. 

" Lastly, from the moment the pendulum was at 
repose, I still held it for a quarter of an hour over 
the mercury without its moving. During this inter- 
val, and totally unknown to me, the plate of glass 
and cake of resin had been interposed and withdrawn 
several times by persons in the room. 

" This is the interpretation I give to these pheno- 
mena : "When I held the pendulum in my hand, a 
muscular motion of my arm, although insensible to 
me, moved the pendulum from its repose, and when 
once the oscillations had commenced they were soon 
augmented by the influence exercised by the sight, 
so as to put me in that particular frame of disposition 
or tendency to the motion. Now, it must be ac- 
knowledged that the muscular motion, even when it 
is increased by this same disjDosition, is nevertheless 
weak enough to stop, I will not say under the empire 
of the will, but when it has simply the thought of 
trying to see whether this or that will stop it. 

" So then, there is an intimate connexion between 



MIND AND MATTEK. 109 

the execution of certain motions and the act of the 
mind relative to them, although this mental act is 
not the will which commands the muscular organs. 
In this regard, it seems to me that the phenomenon 
I have described is interesting in connexion with 
psychology, and even the history of sciences ; they 
prove how easy it is to take illusions for realities, 
whenever we turn our attention towards a phe- 
nomenon wherein our bodies play a part, especially 
in circumstances which have not been sufficiently 
analysed. 

" In truth, if I had contented myself with making 
the pendulum oscillate above certain bodies, and 
with the experiments where these oscillations were 
arrested when glass, resin, &c, were interposed 
between the pendulum and the body which seemed 
to determine its motion, then certainly I would 
have had no reason not to believe in the divining 
rod, or any other thing of the same sort. Now, 
it may be easily conceived how honest and edu- 
cated men are sometimes led to recur to very chi- 
merical ideas to explain phenomena which are not in 
reality removed from the physical world we know. 

" Consequently, I conceive without difficulty that 
an honest man, Avhose whole attention is fixed upon 
the motion a rod which he holds in his hands may 
take from a cause unknown to him, may receive from 
any the least circumstance the tendency to motion 
necessary to superinduce the appearance of the 
expected phenomenon. For example, if that man 
seeks a spring, and he has not his eyes blindfolded, 
the sight of a green plot of grass over which he is 

10 



110 MIND AND MATTER. 

walking may, unknown to himself, determine in him 
the muscular motion capable of disarranging the rod 
by the established association between the idea of 
active vegetation and that of water. 

"The preceding facts, and the interpretation above 
given of them, have led me to connect them with 
others which we may daily observe. From this 
connexion the analysis of them becomes both more 
simple and more precise than it was, at the same 
time that they form an ensemble of facts, whose 
general interpretation is susceptible of a great exten- 
sion. But, before going further, let us distinctly 
remember that my observations present two leading 
circumstances : 

" First. To think that a pendulum held in hand 
may move, and that it moves without our having 
the consciousness that the muscular organ gives it 
the least impulsion. This is the first fact. 

" Secondly. To see this pendulum oscillate, and 
its oscillations become longer from the influence of 
the sight upon the muscular organ ; and this, too, 
without our having the consciousness of it. This 
is the second fact. 

"The tendency to motion, determined in us by 
the sight of a body in motion, is found in several 
cases. For example : 

" 1. When the attention is wholly fixed upon 
a bird flying, a stone thrown, running water, the 
body of the spectator is directed more or less 
towards the line of motion. 

" 2. When a billiard player follows with his eye 
the ball he has just put in motion, he places his body 



MIND AND MATTER. Ill 

in the position he would see the ball follow, as if 
it was still possible for him to direct it towards the 
mark whither he sought to direct it. 

" When we walk upon a slippery place every- 
body knows with what promptness we throw our- 
selves on the side opposite to that whither our body 
is carried in consequence of losing its equilibrium ; 
but a circumstance less generally known is, that a 
tendency to the motion appears even when it is 
impossible for us to move in the sense of this ten- 
dency. For example, in a carriage the fear of being 
upset makes us lean in a direction opposite to that 
which menaces us, and from it result efforts which 
are so much the greater as the fright and irritability 
are greater. I believe that, in ordinary falls, the 
falling is less painful than the effort made to prevent 
the fall. It is in this sense that I understand the 
justness of the proverb : II y a un Dieu pour les 
enfans et pour les ivrognes ! 

" The tendency to motion in a determined sense, 
resulting from the attention given to a certain ob- 
ject, seems to me the prime cause of several pheno- 
mena generally ascribed to imitation. Thus when 
we have seen or have heard a person gape, the mus- 
cular motion of gaping generally takes place in us 
in consequence.' I may make the same remark 
about the communication of laughter, and, besides, 
this example presents more than any other analo- 
gous one, a circumstance which seems to me to sup- 
port the explanation I have given of these pheno- 
mena. For laughter, feeble at first, may, if kept up, 
become accelerated (pardon the word), as we saw 



112 MIND AND MATTEE. 

the oscillations of the pendulum held in the hand 
augment in amplitude, influenced by the sight ; and 
laughter, in being accelerated, may go to convul- 
sions. 

" I do not doubt but that the sight of certain 
actions proper, so act forcibly upon our frail ma- 
chine, that the relation of these same actions ani- 
mates with the voice or gesture ; or, further, the 
knowledge communicated of them by merely read- 
ing about them does induce some individuals to 
do these very same actions, in consequence of a ten- 
dency to motion, which thus mechanically deter- 
mines them to an act of which they never would 
have thought, had not some circumstance, extra- 
neous to their will, presented it, 'and to which they 
would never have been led, but by that which we 
call instinct in animals. 

" In here terminating the exposition of facts 
which seem connected with my observations, I 
think I should make a remark which is certainly 
contained in the foregoing paragraphs, but which 
may escape some reader ; it is, that this tendency 
to motion, to which I attribute the prime cause of a 
great number of our actions, takes place only when 
we are in a certain state, which is exactly that 
which magnetizers call faith. 

" The existence of this state is perfectly demon- 
strated by my experiments. So long as I believed 
the motion of the pendulum which I held in my 
hand possible, it took place ; but, after having dis- 
covered the cause of it, it was impossible for me to 
reproduce it. It is because we are not always in 



MIND AND MATTER. 113 

the same state, that we do not constantly receive 
the same impression from the same thing. 

"Thus the gaping of another does not always 
make us gape ; laughter is not always communicated 
from the laugher to his neighbor, &o. The great 
orator who wishes to make the crowd share his pas- 
sion does not reach at one leap his object ; he com- 
mences by disposing his audience to it, and it is 
only after he has made himself master of them, that 
he gives his last argument, his last trait. The 
great poet, the great writer constantly resort to the 
same artifice ; they first prepare their reader for 
their final impression. 

"Nothing is more curious in the study of the 
causes which determine man's actions, than the 
knowledge of the means employed by the shop- 
keeper to attract and fix the buyer's attention upon 
the qualities of the article he would have him take ; 
or the knowledge of the means employed by the 
' necromancer' to have one rather than another card 
drawn from a pack, or to divert the spectator's 
attention upon one thing so as to withdraw it from 
another, a diversion without which the 'necro- 
mancer' would cause no surprise, which is the great 
object of his art. It results from these considera- 
tions that the most different professions employ 
quite analogous although excessively varied means 
to attain the same end, that of first fixing man's 
attention so as afterwards to produce on him a 
determined effect. 

" I think my observations are connected with the 
history of the faculties of animals ; that some of 

10* 



114 MIND AND MATTEK. 

their acts attributed to instinct are really of the 
class just spoken of. This seems to me especially 
true of gregarious animals ; and it seems to me that 
it would be very interesting to study in this regard 
the influence of their leaders upon the subordinate 
members. 

"Do not the instances above mentioned throw 
some light upon the cause of the fascination one 
animal exerts over another ?" 



THE FOUETH DIALOGUE. 

Different Functions of the Brain and Spinal Chord. — Continuance 
of Life in some Animals without the Brain. — Automatic Mo- 
tions of Plants and of some of the lower Animals. — Multipli- 
cation of the latter by Division. — The Diplozoon Paradoxon. — 
Buffon's view of the Mode of Existence of the lower Animals. 
— A Nervous System not necessary to simple Animal Life. — 
Origin of the nervous Force. — Influence of the venous or 
dark-colored Blood on the Functions of the Nervous System. — 
The Absence of Sensibility or voluntary Power no Proof of the 
Absence of Consciousness. — Dr. Wollaston, &c. — State of 
Mind preceding Death. — Nature and Phenomena of Sleep. — 
Dreams the Result of the Imagination uncontrolled by the 
"Will. — Rapidity of Dreams. — Their Character influenced by 
accidental physical Impressions. — Supposed Solutions of Pro- 
blems, &c. during Sleep. — Muller's Observations on the Sub- 
ject. — Do Dreams answer any Purpose in the Economy of 
living Beings? — Inquiries as to the Nature of the Changes 
which occur in the Nervous System in connection with Mental 
Operations. 

The clear transparent atmosphere of the pre- 
ceding day was followed, as might have been 
anticipated, by rain, which confined us to the 
house. In the afternoon we were assembled in 
Eubulus's library, and had been for some time 
conversing in a desultory manner, when the sub- 
ject of our former discourse was thus resumed. 
Ceites. Ergates regards the brain, properly 



116 MIND AND MATTER. 

so called, as the physical organ by means of 
which alone (to use his own expression) the one 
indivisible percipient and thinking being, which 
each of us feels himself to be, maintains its com- 
munication with the external material world. 
But I own that he did not quite satisfy me that 
this opinion is correct, and I should be glad to 
make some farther inquiries on the subject. A 
priori, there is no reason why the mind should 
not be in connection with any, and every, other 
part of the nervous system ; why it should not 
be present in the eye, and at once, and without 
the intervention of any other organ, have a 
direct perception of the picture of external 
objects which is painted on the retina; or a 
similar perception of the impressions which the 
waves of sound make on the nerves in the laby- 
rinth of the ear ; or of those which we refer to 
the sense of touch in the hands or feet, or else- 
where on the surface of the body. Then, if I am 
not misinformed, the spinal chord in some of the 
lower animals of the vertebrate class is of con- 
siderably larger size than the brain itself. May 
we not, therefore, conclude that it is at least 



MIND AND MATTER. 117 

equal to the brain as to the importance of its 
functions? Again, mankind have, very gene- 
rally, referred hope and fear, joy and sorrow, 
love and hatred, to the heart. May they not 
have their special seat in the nerves of that 
organ? I have understood that a distinguished 
French physiologist supposed what you anato- 
mists call the great sympathetic nerve (which I 
understand to be connected with, but neverthe- 
less distinct from, both the brain and the spinal 
chord) to be the actual seat of that class of men- 
tal conditions which we call the passions or 
emotions. 

Ekgates. I agree with you in the opinion 
that, & priori, there is no reason why all this 
should not be as you suggest. The only ques- 
tion is as to the matter of fact. You may recol- 
lect that in the course of our conversation 
yesterday, I referred to two cases, in one of 
which pressure on the optic nerve, and in the 
other disease of the same nerve, occasioned total 
blindness ; but in which nevertheless the indi- 
viduals thus affected were haunted by illusions, 
believing that they saw objects which did not 



118 MIND AND MATTER. 

actually exist. So if the nerves be divided or 
materially injured in the thigh, the sense of 
touch is destroyed in the foot : while, if the leg be 
amputated, the patient for a long time afterwards 
feels his feet and toes as if they still belonged to 
him. The conclusion to be drawn from these 
facts is sufficiently obvious. 

"With regard to the spinal chord, we know that 
it exercises functions of the greatest importance 
in the animal economy, generating the nervous 
energy, which is required for muscular action; 
influencing the secretions ; in part regulating the 
motions of the heart; and probably helping to 
maintain the action of different organs in that 
sympathetic union and harmony which is ne- 
cessary to the due performance of their several 
functions. The size of the spinal chord bears an 
exact proportion to what is required of it in 
those respects, while it has no relation whatever 
to the faculties of perception and thought. It is 
true that the spinal chord is composed of the 
same materials as the brain, in the form of the 
grey and vesicular, and the white or fibrous 
substance ; but in the former there is throughout 



MIND AJSTD MATTER. 119 

a constant repetition of the same structure; 
while in the brain, as indeed I explained formerly, 
there is an almost endless variety as to the mode 
in which the two elementary substances are 
arranged ; so that we recognise in it, not a simple 
and uniform organ, but a congeries of organs, 
each having a peculiar structure, and being evi- 
dently intended to answer a special and peculiar 
purpose. A large extravasation of blood within 
the head, by the pressure which it causes on the 
brain, induces a state in which there is a total 
insensibility to all external impressions, and at 
the same time an entire suspension of the influence 
of volition. But the effect of a similar injury of 
the spinal chord is widely different. The parts 
below the injury, the communication of which 
with the brain is thus interrupted, are deprived 
of their sensibility. The muscles are no longer 
subjected to the dominion of the will, although 
they may still contract on the application of 
mechanical stimuli or electricity. The lower 
limbs may be made to start by tickling the soles 
of the feet. But those motions are merely 
automatic, and we have no reason to believe that 



120 MIND AND MATTER. 

they are attended with sensation, or preceded by- 
volition, any more than those of the leaves of the 
Mimosa sensitiva. At the same time, in those 
parts of the body which are above the injury, 
and whose nervous communication with the brain 
is not interrupted, the sensibility and power of 
voluntary motion are unimpaired, as are also the 
mental faculties. Singular indeed is the condition 
of the individual, in whom there has been a 
laceration, or other severe injury of the spinal 
chord in that part of the neck which is immedi- 
ately below the origin of the nerves belonging to 
the diaphragm. In him respiration, though im- 
perfectly performed, continues, so that life may 
be maintained during a period which varies from 
twenty-four hours to five or six days. He retains 
his consciousness; he can see and hear, and 
comprehend what passes around him, but except 
his head, and the upper part of the neck, his 
body is as if it did not belong to him. He is 
a living head, and nothing more. I saw a lady 
under these circumstances with her mind as 
active, her sympathy with others, and her sense 
of duty as perfect, as before the injury had 



MIND AND MATTER. 121 

occurred. In fact, the result which follows any- 
severe injury of the spinal chord, though greater 
in extent, is of the same kind as that which 
follows the division of a nerve. Then, as to 
Bichat's hypothesis of the passions or emotions 
having their seat in the great sympathetic nerve ; 
on a former occasion I referred to the effect of 
grief in causing tears to flow from the lachrymal 
gland, and of mental anxiety in stopping the 
secretion of saliva, and interfering with the 
digestion of the food in the stomach; and we 
all know the influence of deep emotion on the 
action of the heart ; but surely it would be a very- 
far-fetched conclusion to infer from such facts as 
these that grief resides in the ophthalmic branch 
of the nerve of the fifth pair, or hope and fear in 
the nerves which supply the heart. Indeed, they 
show nothing but this, that as certain states of 
mind affect one class of muscles by means of 
volition, so other states of mind affect other 
muscles, or other organs, without the volition 
being exercised. 

We must regard the animal appetites and 
instincts as being intimately connected with the 

11 



122 MIND AND MATTER. 

nervous system, and as having their special 
places allotted to them in it. But we are not 
warranted in drawing the same conclusion as 
to the emotions and passions, properly so called. 
Hope and fear, joy and sorrow, pride and shame, 
these, and such as these, are conditions of the 
mind, which have no abstract or independent 
existence ; but which, as they may be super- 
added to our perceptions and thoughts, admit of 
being excited and acted on through the medium 
of the nervous system. At the same time, as 
far as we can see, they have no special locality 
m it. 

EiTBULTJS. But has it not been stated that there 
are some of the less perfect vertebrate animals, 
which actually survive decapitation, and live 
even for several months after being thus deprived 
of the brain ? and is it not the case that some of 
the lower grade of animals admit of being divided 
into parts, and that each of these becomes a 
distinct individual, as if in them the mental 
principle resided in the animal generally, and 
were itself capable of division? 

Eegates. You refer to the observations of 



MIND AND MATTER. 123 

Le Gallois, who found that certain lizards lived for 
a very considerable time after the loss of the head ; 
and that, when they died at last, the immediate 
cause of death appeared to be the want of food. 
But creatures under such circumstances exhibit 
no sign of anything more than automatic life. 
Even breathing is suspended, the blood probably 
deriving the little oxygen which is required, not 
from air drawn into the lungs, but from being 
exposed to the atmosphere in the superficial 
vessels of the skin. It is true that if the legs 
be pinched under these circumstances the mus- 
cles are made to contract ; but this is no more a 
proof of sensibility than the starting of the limbs, 
which I have already mentioned as occurring in 
the human being, on tickling the soles of the feet 
after an injury of the spinal chord; or the con- 
vulsions of epilepsy. Then as to the multiplica- 
tion of some of the lower orders of animals by 
division, we know so little of their mode of 
existence, and it is so entirely different from 
that of animals of the higher orders, that it 
really seems to me that we can draw from it no 
conclusion that would be well applicable to the 



124 MIND AND MATTER. 

latter. Is it at all certain that the polypus, in 

which we find no traces of a nervous system, is 

really endowed with any higher properties than 

those of vegetable life ? Do the motions of its 

filaments afford any better evidence of sensibility 

than is exhibited by many plants, such as the 

fly-catching Dioncea, or the Mimosa sensitiva? 

or than the motions of the minute bodies termed 

cilia in animals ? Do not the lacteals show as 

much discrimination in selecting the chyle, and 

rejecting other fluids which are not fitted for 

nutrition, as the polypus shows in catching its 

food, yet without our being conscious of it ? Or, 

granting the sensibility of the polypus, may it 

not be a compound animal with various centres 

of sensation and volition, in like manner as in a 

tree every bud is a distinct individual, which 

may live and grow though separated from the 

parent stock? An example of this mode of 

existence is supplied by an animal much above 

the polypus in the scale of living beings. The 

diplozoon paradoxon is described by Nordmann 

as a parasitic animal which attaches itself to the 

gills of the Cyprinus Brama. It consists, in 



HIND AND MATTER. 125 

fact, of two animals, united in the centre so that 
they have a part of their viscera in common, but 
with two distinct nervous systems. As far as the 
latter are concerned, there is no reason why each 
half of this double creature should not live very 
well, though separated from the other.* 

I am aware that one of our most celebrated 
modern physiologists, from observing the multi- 
plication of polypi by the mere division of the 
animal, and from some other circumstances, has 
come to the conclusion which you have suggested, 
that the mental principle, which to our concep- 
tions presents itself as being so preeminently, 
above all other things in nature, one and indivi- 
sible, is nevertheless itself divisible, not less than 
the corporeal fabric with which it is associated. 
But it is to be observed that, great as is the 
authority of Miiller generally in questions of 
physiology, in the present instance he may be in 
some degree prejudiced by his inclination to the 
pantheistic theory, which has descended from the 
school of Pythagoras to these latter times, as it 
had before been derived by him from the Budd- , 

* Annales des Sciences NatureUes, vol. xxx. 1833, 
11* 



126 MIND AND MATTER. 

hists of the East ; and which teaches that all the 
innumerable variety of living beings which we 
see around us, are but different manifestations, 
and as it were emanations, of the one vast in- 
telligent spirit which, pervading the universe, 
" Agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet." 

Eubultts. If my recollection be accurate, 
Buffon regards the condition of some of the lower 
animals, taking the oyster as an example, as being 
that of constant and profound sleep, meaning that 
they have neither sensation nor volition. 

Eegates. However that may be, there is no 
doubt that mere animal life may exist without 
either the one or the other, or without anything 
that bears even the most remote relation to the 
mental principle. For instance, Dr. John Clarke 
has given an account of " an extraordinary pro- 
duct of human generation," in which there was 
"neither brain, spinal marrow, nor nerves, nor 
heart, nor lungs," but which was nevertheless a 
living organized mass, containing several bones 
tolerably well formed, and vestiges of some other 
organs.* 

* Philos. Transactions, 1793, p. 154. 



MIND AND MATTER. 127 

As I have already mentioned, the nervous 
system is composed of two substances of different 
organization; the one, which is commonly called 
the medullary, being of a white color, of a soft 
consistence, which may be proved by a careful 
dissection to be composed of fibres ; the other of 
vesicular or cellular structure, of a still softer 
consistence, more largely supplied with blood- 
vessels, presenting no fibrous appearance, and of 
a gray colour. This gray matter exists in much 
smaller quantity than the medullary, being dis- 
posed in layers in which the fibres of the latter 
seem to have their origin. It is generally 
supposed that the function of the medullary 
substance is to conduct, direct, and make use of 
the nervous force, the latter being generated in 
the gray substance, and being in itself always 
one and the same, though converted to different 
purposes in different parts ; much as the electri- 
city generated in a voltaic battery is made by 
means of one apparatus to produce chemical 
decomposition, and by means of others to direct 
the needles of a telegraph, or convert common 
iron into a magnet. We may carry the parallel 



128 MIND AND MATTER. 

between the nervous and the electric force further 
still. Although the gray matter of the nervous 
system is necessary for the production of the 
former, it is not in itself sufficient, any more 
than the alternate plates of zinc and copper are 
sufficient for the production of electricity. The 
acid solution added to the voltaic battery is 
required in the one case, the presence of blood 
which has obtained a scarlet color and undergone 
other changes by exposure to the air in the lungs, 
is necessary in the other. In some animals of the 
cold-blooded classes the sensibility as to external 
impressions, and the power of voluntary move- 
ment, may indeed remain after the supply of 
scarlet blood has ceased, but it is only for a short 
period of time ; while in man and in other warm- 
blooded animals the suspension of the same 
faculties, under the same circumstances, seems 
to be, not absolutely, but almost instantaneous. 
In a person who is drowned, or otherwise suffo- 
cated, and in whom the dark-coloured blood is 
transmitted to the brain by the action of the 
heart, two or three minutes are sufficient to 
produce the effect which has been described. 



MIND AND MATTER. 129 

This has been fully explained by Bichat, whose 
observations on the subject I had occasion 
to mention formerly. If you wish to obtain 
further information on it, and will refer to the 
"Recherches sur la vie et la mort" you will be 
well rewarded for your labor. 

Eubulus. Under this view of the subject, the 
dark-colored blood affects the brain simply by a 
negative influence ; by depriving it of that, what- 
ever it may be, which exists in the scarlet blood, 
but not in the dark-colored blood, and which is 
necessary to the generation of the nervous force. 
But, if this were all, the brain ought to resume 
its functions immediately on the supply of scarlet 
blood being restored. Is it so in reality ? I have 
heard of drowned persons who remained insensi- 
ble for a long time after they were taken out of . 
the water, although they recovered ultimately, 

Ergates. Your observation is quite correct. 
In fainting, or, as we technically term it, in syn- 
cope, the supply of blood to the brain is inter- 
rupted altogether, — both of that which is scarlet, 
and of that which is dark-colored ; and if the 
syncope be complete, there is a state of apparent 



130 MIND AND MATTEE. 

insensibility, from which, however, when the ac- 
tion of the heart is restored, the patient very soon 
recovers. But the dark-colored blood, if it has 
once been transmitted to the brain, even for two 
or three minutes, leaves an impression on it, from 
which it may not recover for half an hour or 
even longer. After strangulation, especially, in- 
dividuals have sometimes remained in a state of 
apparent insensibility for some hours. In fact, 
the dark-colored blood transmitted to the brain 
operates as a narcotic poison. I need scarcely re- 
mind you that there are very many foreign sub- 
stances, as for example alcohol, chloroform, opium, 
the woorara, which introduced into the circulation 
produce the same effect, even though the supply 
of scarlet blood is not interrupted. Of the 
modus operandi of such terrible agents we are 
wholly ignorant. All that we know is the simple 
fact, that when their operation is complete they 
render the brain insensible to the impressions 
made on the external senses, and incapable of 
transmitting the influence of volition to the mus- 
cles. Pressure on the brain or a stroke of light 
ning may produce the same effect. 



MIND AND MATTER. 131 

Eubtjlus. In short, a condition of the brain 
producing unconsciousness may be produced in 
various ways. 

Ergates. I have purposely avoided using the 
word unconsciousness, for as to that it is plain 
that we know nothing. The mind may be in ope- 
ration, although the suspension of the sensibility 
of the nervous system, and of the influence of 
volition over the muscles, destroys its connection 
with the external world, and prevents all commu- 
nication with the minds of others. It is indeed 
difficult to say even when the external senses are 
completely and absolutely closed. I might refer 
to numerous facts which, have fallen under my ob- 
servation as illustrating this subject ; but the fol- 
lowing will be sufficient. An elderly lady had a 
stroke of apoplexy ; she lay motionless, and in 
what is called a state of stupor, and no one doubted 
that she was dying. But after the lapse of three 
or four days, there were signs of amendment, and 
she ultimately recovered. After her recovery 
she explained that she did not believe that she 
had been unconscious, or even insensible, during 
any part of the attack. She knew her situation, 



132 MIND AND MATTER. 

and heard much, of what was said by those 
around her. Especially she recollected observa- 
tions intimating that she would very soon be no 
more, but that at the same time she had felt sa- 
tisfied that she would recover ; that she had no 
power of expressing what she felt, but that 
nevertheless her feelings, instead of being pain- 
ful or in any way distressing, had been agreeable 
rather than otherwise. She described them, as 
very peculiar ; as if she were constantly mount- 
ing upwards, and as something very different 
from what she had ever before experienced. 
Another lady, who had met with a severe injury 
of the head, which caused her to be for some 
days in a state of insensibility, described herself 
as having been in the enjoymeut of some beati- 
fic visions, at the same time that she had no 
knowledge of what had actually happened, or of 
what was passing around her. I have been 
curious to watch the state of dying persons in 
this respect, and I am satisfied that, where an 
ordinary observer would not for an instant doubt 
that the individual is in a state of complete stu- 
por, the mind is often active even at the very 



MIND AND MATTER. 133 

moment of death. A friend of mine, who had 
been for many years the excellent chaplain of a 
large hospital, informed me that his still larger 
experience had led him to the same conclusion. 
A remarkable example of this occurred in the 
case of the late Dr. "Wollaston. His death was 
occasioned by a tumor of the brain, which, after 
having attained a certain size, encroached on the 
cavities (or, as they are technically termed, the 
ventricles) of the brain, and caused an effusion 
of fluid into them, producing paralysis of one side 
of the body ; and it is worthy of notice that cer- 
tain symptoms which he had himself noted, and 
as to the cause of which he had been in the 
habit of speculating, proved that this organic dis- 
ease must have existed from a very early period 
of his life, without interfering with those scientific 
investigations which made him one of the most 
eminent philosophers, and one of the greatest 
ornaments, of the age in which he lived. During 
his last illness his mental faculties were perfect, 
so that he dictated an account of some scientific 
observations which would have been lost to the 
world otherwise. Some time before his life was 

12 



134: MIND AND MATTER. 

finally extinguished he was seen to be pale, as if 
there were scarcely any circulation of blood going 
on ; motionless, and to all appearance in a state of 
complete insensibility. Being in this condition, 
his friends who were watching around him ob- 
served some motions of the hand which was not 
affected by the paralysis. After some time it 
occurred to them that he wished to have a pencil 
and paper, and these having been supplied, he 
contrived to write some figures in arithmetical 
progression, which, however imperfectly scrawled, 
were yet sufficiently legible. It was supposed 
that he had overheard some remarks respecting 
the state in which he was, and that his object 
was to show that he preserved his sensibility and 
consciousness. Something like this occurred 
some hours afterwards, and immediately before 
he died, but the scrawl of these last moments 
could not be decyphered.* 

Eubulus. You might refer, as confirming the 
observations which you have just made, to that 
interesting letter of Sir Francis Beaufort (which 
some of us had seen long ago in manuscript, and 

* See Additional Note E. 



MIND AND MATTEK. 135 

which is now generally known, having been 
published by the late Sir John Barrow in his 
autobiography), in which the writer describes 
what happened to himself when he was per- 
served from being drowned ; when " every inci- 
dent of his former life seemed to glance across his 
recollection in retrograde succession, not in mere 
outline, but the picture being filled with every 
minute and collateral feature," forming " a kind 
of panoramic view of his entire existence, each 
act of it accompanied by a sense of right and 
wrong."* 

Ergates. I have been informed of some other 
cases in which the same thing happened, and all 
this must have been in the brief space of a very 
few minutes. But I have also been informed of 
other instances of individuals whose minds had 
been affected very much in the same way when 
they were suddenly placed in a situation which 
threatened immediate death, although they were 
not at all deprived of their sensibility and self- 
possession. It is probable that histories such as 
these suggested that rather curious tale of the 

* Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow, Bart., p. 398. 



136 MUST) AND MATTER. 

Chec Chehabeddin and the infidel Sultan of 
Egypt, which used to astonish my youthful imagi- 
nation, in reading the Persian and Turkish tales. 
The accounts, however, given after recovery from 
drowning, vary very much. Some, whatever they 
may have felt at the time, remember nothing ex- 
ce'pt their having been overcome by a sense of 
insuperable drowsiness. In one instance, as a 
naval officer informed me, a sailor who had been 
snatched from the waves, after lying for some 
time insensible on the deck of the vessel, pro- 
claimed on his recovery that he had been in 
Heaven, and complained bitterly of his being 
restored to life as a great hardship. The man 
had been regarded as a worthless fellow; but 
from the time of the accident having occurred, 
his moral character was altered, and he became 
one of the best conducted sailors in the ship. 

Eubulijs. "We may conclude, from what you 
now have stated, that drowning, terrible as it 
appears to be, is not, after all, either morally or 
physically, a painful death ; and this is confirmed 
by the experience of a friend of my own, who 
very nearly lost his life in this manner. He says 



MIND AND MATTER. 137 

that the last thing which he remembers is looking 
at the pebbles and weeds at the bottom of the 
river, with little or no fear of what was about to 
happen, and no bodily suffering. I suppose that 
it is the same whenever death takes place in the 
same manner : in cases of strangulation, for ex- 
ample. 

Eegates. Really, according to my observa- 
tion, the mere act of dying is seldom, in any 
sense of the word, a very painful process. It is 
true that some persons die in a state of bodily 
torture, as in cases of tetanus ; that the drunkard, 
dying of delirium tremens, is haunted by terrific 
visions ; and that the victim of that most horrible 
of all diseases, hydrophobia, in addition to those 
peculiar bodily sufferings from which the disease 
has derived its name, may be in a state of terror 
from the supposed presence of frightful objects, 
which are presented to him as realities, even to 
the last. But these and some other instances 
which I might adduce are exceptions to the 
general rule, which is, that both mental and 
bodily suffering terminates long before the scene 
is finally closed. Then as to the actual fear of 

12* 



138 MIND AND MATTEK. 

death : it seems to me that the Author of our ex- 
istence, for the most part, gives it to us when it 
is intended that we should live, and takes it 
away from us when it is intended that we should 
die. Those who have been long tormented by 
bodily pain are generally as anxious to die as 
they ever were to live. So it often is with those 
whose life has been protracted to an extreme old 
age, beyond the usual period of mortality, even 
when they labor under no actual disease. It is 
not very common for any one to die merely of 
old age : 

"Like ripe fruit to drop 
Into his mother's lap." 

But I have known this to happen ; and a happy 
conclusion it has seemed to be of worldly cares 
and joys. It was like falling to sleep, never to 
awake again in this state of existence. Some die 
retaining all their faculties, and quite aware 
that their dissolution is at hand. Others offer 
no signs of recognition of external objects, so 
that it is impossible for us to form any positive 
opinion whether they do or do not retain then* 
sensibility ; and others, again, as I have already 



MIND AND MATTER. 139 

stated, who appear to be insensible and uncon- 
scious, when carefully watched, are found not to 
be so in reality; but they die contentedly. I 
have myself never known but two instances in 
which, in the act of dying, there were manifest 
indications of the fear of death. The individuals 
to whom I allude were unexpectedly destroyed 
by haemorrhage, which, from peculiar circum- 
stances, which I need not now explain, it was 
impossible to suppress. The depressing effects 
which the gradual loss of blood produced on 
their corporeal system seemed to influence their 
minds, and they died earnestly imploring that 
relief which art was unable to afford. Seneca 
might have chosen an easier death than that from 
opening his arteries. 

Eubulus. In the account which you have 
now given us, it seems to me that you have 
made a considerable omission, inasmuch as you 
have said nothing as to the influence of religious 
sentiments on the minds of dying persons ; of the 
hopes and fears connected with the retrospect of 
a well-spent or ill-spent life, and with the prospect 
of what is to happen after the greatest and most 



140 MIND AND MATTER. 

mysterious change belonging to humanity has 
taken place. 

Eegates. You have called our attention to 
a subject involving considerations to which no 
one can be indifferent. But you do me an 
injustice, if you suppose that I have been un- 
mindful of it. "What I have said refers only to 
the last stage in the process of dissolution. 
There is no doubt that a pure and simple reli- 
gious faith, and a firm reliance on the Being who 
has placed us here, contribute more than anything 
besides to disarm death of its terrors, deprive 
"the grave of its victory," and smoothe the 
passage of the humble and sincere believer to 
the termination of his worldly career. JSTever- 
theless, according to my own experience, and 
what I have heard from others, the influence of 
religious feelings is, for the most part, not so 
much perceptible at the moment when death is 
actually impending, as it is at an earlier period, 
when the individual, who was previously in health, 
or supposed himself to be so, first discovers that 
it is probable that he will die. 

Ceites. You have compared death from mere 



MIND AND MATTER. 141 

old age to falling asleep never to awaken again 
in this world. This brings us to another subject, 
not very distantly related to that which we have 
been just discussing ; at least, so thought the 
Latin poet, when he wrote — 

" Quid est somnus, gelidas nisi mortis imago ? " 
"What is sleep itself ? Wherefore is it required ? 
What is the condition of the nervous system on 
which it immediately depends? And what, 
during sleep, is the actual condition of the 
physical and mental faculties ? 

Eegates. One of your questions certainly 
cannot be answered. It is plain that in some 
respects the condition of the nervous system 
must be different during sleep from what it is 
when we are awake ; but it seems impossible 
that we should know in what that difference con- 
sists, when we consider that neither our unassisted 
vision, nor the microscope, nor chemical analysis, 
nor any analogy, nor any other means at our 
disposal, enable us to form any kind of notion as 
to the actual changes in the brain or spinal chord 
on which any other nervous phenomena depend.* 

* At the meeting of the British Association for the Promotion 
of Science, in 1853, Sir David Brewster stated, "that ho 



142 MIND AND MATTER. 

Then, as to the other points to which you have 
adverted, the subject has been so frequently 
treated of by others, that there is little or nothing 
new to remark upon it. 

It appears that in human beings, and in all 
animals of the higher classes, those functions, 
which Bichat has described as constituting the 
system of organic life, may continue to be per- 
formed without the need of repose ; but that it is 
quite otherwise with regard to those which the 
same physiologist has referred to animal life, and 
which are connected with the mental principle. 

believed it was an established fact that different parts of the 
body fall asleep at different times, and that it might, perhaps, by 
analogy, be argued that different parts of the brain fall asleep also 
at different times. It is also a fact fully established that different 
parts of the body get intoxicated sooner than others. First the 
eyes begin to glaze, then the tongue to get flabby, then the 
muscles to give way in the arms, then in the limbs, and so on. 

" Experiments had also been made to test the different sensi- 
tiveness of various parts of the human body, by means of a pair 
of compasses. 

"At a distance of only one eighth of an inch between the legs 
of the compasses, the two points will be distinguished on some 
parts of the body, whilst on the back the effect will be that of 
only one point unless the compass is stretched several inches." 



MIND AND MATTER. 143 

It is for the latter, and not for the former, that 
sleep is required. As Eubulus observed on a 
former occasion, the action of the heart and of 
the muscles of respiration, the digestion of the 
food, the various secretions, the generation of 
animal heat, all these functions are performed 
during sleep, as well as when we are awake ; 
and, so far, the sleep of human beings differs 
very much from the torpor of hybernating 
animals, in whom, during the winter, these func- 
tions are reduced to the very lowest degree of 
activity. But, if we extend our inquiries to the 
functions of animal life, we find, that if we act 
with the voluntary muscles, if we think, and even 
if we merely attend to the sensations which are 
derived through the organs of sense, or to those 
which arise spontaneously in our minds, after 
a time what we call a sense of weariness arises, 
and we require repose ; and it is this repose which 
sleep affords us. It would appear that during 
sleep there is an accumulation of the nervous 
force, which is brought into use, and gradually 
expended after sleep is terminated ; the expendi- 
ture of it being greater, and the exhaustion more 



144 MIND AND MATTEE. 

complete accordingly as the volition is more 
or less exercised. The muscles of the limbs 
may be for a long time in a state of involuntary 
contraction (as in cases of tetanus or catalepsy) 
without weariness being induced ; but under the 
influence of the will, they cannot remain con- 
tracted for more than a few minutes at a time. 
'In like manner visions may pass before the mind 
when it is entirely passive, without causing 
fatigue ; but it is quite otherwise when we 
endeavor to arrest their progress, to view them 
under different aspects, and to compare them 
with each other. This occasions weariness, and 
the necessity of repose, as much as voluntary 
muscular exertion; and, at intervals, of that 
complete repose which belongs to sleep ; and 
these things justify the opinion, which though it 
might not have originated with him, was first 
brought into notice by Dr. Darwin, that the 
essential part of sleep is the suspension of 
volition. 

Ceites. But some objections may be made to 
this explanation. "We see persons turn round in 
their sleep, and hear them talk in their sleep, 



MIND AND MATTER. 145 

which must be regarded as a proof that their 
volition is exercised. Besides, we breathe in our 
sleep, and is not this a voluntary process ? 

Ergates. Such objections are easily answered. 
There are, in fact, degrees of sleep. It may be 
so incomplete that the individual may be moving 
and awaking at intervals during the whole night. 
As to breathing, I apprehend that no one who is 
at the pains to consider the subject can doubt 
that, although to a certain extent it may be 
influenced by the will, this function is, under 
ordinary circumstances, as independent of it as 
the action of the heart, or the peristaltic motion 
of the intestines. We may by a powerful effort 
suspend the action of the respiratory muscles 
during a limited time. It is said that the divers 
for pearls can do this for a minute, or even longer. 
At last, however, the will is powerless, and we 
breathe in spite of it. Again, you may say that 
a sound or touch, which would be heard or felt 
by a waking person, may not affect us at all 
when we are asleep ; and that this shows that 
there is something more than the mere absence 
of volition. But observe, at all times, what a 

13 



146 MIND AND MATTEK. 

multitude of impressions are made on our senses, 
of which we take no cognisance. I am engaged 
in writing a letter, or in reading a book in which 
I am much interested ; a friend comes into the 
room, opens and shuts the door, or he may even 
speak to me in his ordinary tone of voice, and I 
know nothing of it. It is obvious, that unless 
our attention be directed to them, the impressions 
on our senses are not communicated to the mind ; 
and such an effort of attention implies an effort 
of volition? But my friend speaks to me in a 
louder tone, which rouses my attention ; and then 
I hear all that he says in his ordinary voice 
afterwards. So it is during' sleep. Those smaller 
sounds which we hear distinctly when we lie 
awake, in the stillness of the night, are during 
sleep unnoticed. So is the light from the rush- 
light. But a tempest of wind, or the morning 
sun pouring in his rays through the window, 
rouses our attention, and with this effort of atten- 
tion sleep is terminated. 

I may here refer to the state of mind during 
what is popularly termed " the nightmare," as 
illustrating this subject. In this case sleep is 



MTND AND MATTER. 147 

imperfect. "We are to a certain extent aware of 
our situation. We know where we are, but we 
feel as if some power oppressed us, and prevented 
our moving our limbs. The fact is, not that the 
muscles will not obey the will, but that the will 
itself is not exercised. The paralysis and cata- 
lepsy of hysterical patients is of the same kind, 
and both the one and the other immediately 
vanish if a strong impression be made on the 
senses, or even on the imagination. 

Sound sleep is incompatible with voluntary 
exertion, mental or bodily. After long watchful- 
ness, or severe labor, we sleep in spite of ourselves, 
because the power of exercising the volition is 
exhausted. If we would sleep under other cir- 
cumstances, the first thing that we do is to abstain 
from exercising it. We place ourselves in that 
position in which we can remain without calling 
into action any of our voluntary muscles; we 
close our eyes that we may not be tempted to 
attend to visible objects ; we exclude from our 
minds all disagreeable or otherwise exciting sub- 
jects to which our attention might be too earnest- 
ly directed. We cause a child to sleep by rocking 



148 MIND AND MATTER. 

him in his cradle. The so-called mesmeric passes 
may produce the same effect. "When I do not 
easily fall asleep at night, I frequently succeed 
in obtaining sleep by watching the strange, inde- 
scribable, and ever varying spectra, which I refer 
to the eye, though they are probably in the brain 
itself, and which present themselves when real 
objects are excluded from the sight. It is not 
that on such occasions as those to which I have 
referred, there is absolutely no effort of attention, 
but the effort is so slight that it is next to none 
at all, and readily ceases of itself, at the same 
time that it prevents the greater effort which I 
should be led to make if things of higher interest 
were to occupy the mind. 

There are physical causes within ourselves, 
and independent of all external circumstances, 
which interfere with sleep, — bodily pain, for 
example, or acid in the stomach. It may be 
said that actual pain, and the disagreeable sen- 
sations produced by indigestion, prevent sleep, as 
a strong light might prevent it, by too powerfully 
exciting the attention. At the same time, there 
is no doubt that there is sometimes a morbid 



MIND AND MATTER. 149 

condition of the nervous system, the nature of 
which we cannot well explain, which is incom- 
patible with sleep. The patient says, "I feel 
fatigued and wearied, and that I want to sleep, 
but I cannot sleep." 

Eubulus. I have understood that this state 
of the system, when long continued, is sometimes 
the forerunner of mental derangement; and I 
can well understand it to be so. It is reasonable 
to suppose that the absence of its natural refresh- 
ment would powerfully affect the nervous system. 
Indeed, it happened to myself to be acquainted 
with a case of this kind. A gentleman of my 
acquaintance, in whose family circumstances had 
occurred which were to him a source of intense 
anxiety, passed six entire days and nights without 
sleep. At the end of this time he became 
affected with illusions of such a nature that it 
was necessary to place him in confinement. 
After some time he recovered perfectly. He 
had never shown any signs of mental derange- 
ment before, nor had any one of his family, and 
he has never since been similarly affected. 
This was an extreme case. But do not examples 

13* 



150 MIND AND MATTEE. 

of the want of sleep producing very similar 
results, though in a very much less degree, 
occur under our observation constantly? How 
altered is the state of mind in any one of us after 
even two sleepless nights ! Many a person, who, 
under ordinary circumstances, is cheerful and 
unsuspicious, becomes not only irritable and 
peevish, but also labors under actual though 
transitory illusions ; such, for example, as think- 
ing that others neglect him, or affront him, who 
have not the smallest intention of doing either 
the one or the other. 

Ergates. I have observed such effects as 
these repeatedly in nurses who have been harass- 
ed by an incessant attendance on sick persons 
during many successive days and nights ; and 
this goes far towards explaining the origin of 
a vice to which individuals of this class too fre- 
quently become addicted. Alcohol removes the 
uneasy feeling, and the inability of exertion, 
which the want of sleep occasions. I have some- 
times, when I have been writing late at night, 
and much fatigued, so that I could scarcely fix 
my attention on the thing before me, feeling as if 



MIND AND MATTER. 151 

my head were almost too large for the room to 
contain it, obtained complete relief by taking a 
single glass of wine. But such relief is only 
temporary. Stimulants do not create nervous 
power ; they merely enable you, as it were, 
to use up that which is left, and then they leave 
you more in need of rest than you were before. 
The same observation applies to powerful men- 
tal excitement, with this difference, however, 
that it enables you to overcome the sense of 
exhaustion more completely, at the same time 
that it has a less transient operation than any 
merely physical stimulus. 

Crites. The observations which you have 
now offered relate chiefly to our physical condi- 
tion during sleep. But the state of the mind 
during sleep is to us, who are not physiolo- 
gists, a question of even greater interest than 
this. Eubulus made some remarks on this subj ect 
on a former occasion. Perhaps he can give us 
some further insight into it. 

Eubulus. Indeed, it is difficult for me to say 
anything without the risk of repeating what I 
have incidentally said already. Besides, I have 



152 MIND AND MATTER. 

no knowledge of the subject beyond that which is 
within the reach of any other person with com- 
mon powers of observation. 

During what may be called sound sleep, those 
impressions on the external senses, of which 
we take cognisance while we are awake, are 
altogether unnoticed. But it is not so with 
regard to those changes which are taking place 
in the brain itself; and that which constitutes the 
imagination during the day is the foundation of 
our dreams at night. There is, however, a great 
difference in the two cases, to which I adverted 
formerly. The imagination while we are awake 
is regulated by the will. We can arrest its visions 
as they pass before us, compare them with each 
other, and dismiss them as we please. But it is 
not so with our dreams at night. Here the visions 
which arise, uninfluenced by the will, succeed 
each other according to no rule with which we 
are acquainted, forming strange combinations, 
often wholly unlike anything that really occurs ; 
and not less differing from reality in the rapidity 
with which they come and depart. You are 
called in the morning, and fall asleep again. 



MIND AND MATTER. 153 

Perhaps, you have slept only one or two minutes, 
but you have had a long dream. The late Lord 
Holland was accustomed to relate the following 
anecdote of what had happened to himself. On 
an occasion, when he was much fatigued, while 
listening to a friend who was reading aloud, he 
fell asleep, and had a dream, the particulars of 
which it would have occupied him a quarter of 
an hour or longer to express in writing. After 
he awoke, he found that he remembered the 
beginning of one sentence, while he actually 
heard the latter part of the sentence immediately 
following it, so that probably the whole time 
during which he had slept did not occupy more 
than a few seconds. I mention this, however, 
only in the way of illustration, not as any very 
singular occurrence.* Instances of the same 

* Some of the most singular illustrations of the rapidity with 
which states of consciousness succeed each other have been 
afforded by persons in whom there has been a sense of great 
personal danger, as during an accident, with, at the same time, a 
circulation of undecarbonized blood through the brain. The 
accidents of hanging and drowning are of this character. Binns 
relates the following: — 

" We are acquainted with a gentleman, who, being able to 



154 MIND AND MATTER. 

thing are referred to by Lord Brougham in his 
" Discourse on Natural Theology ; " and similar 
instances may, if we look for them, be found 

swim but little, ventured too far out, and became exhausted. 
His alarm was great ; and after making strenuous but ill-directed 
efforts to regain the shore, he shouted for assistance, and then 
sank, as he supposed, to rise no more. The noise of the water 
in his ears was at first horrible, and the idea of death — and such 
a death — terrific in the extreme. He felt himself sinking as if 
for an age ; and descent, it seemed, would have no end. But 
this frightful state passed away. His senses became steeped in 
light. Innumerable and beautiful visions presented themselves 
to his imagination. Luminous aerial shapes accompanied him 
through embowering groves of graceful trees ; while soft music, 
as if breathed from their leaves, moved his spirit to voluptuous 
repose. Marble colonnades, light-pierced vistas, soft grassy walks, 
picturesque groups of angelic beings, gorgeously plumaged birds, 
golden fish that swam in purple waters, and ghstening fruit that 
hung from latticed arbors, were seen, admired, and passed. 
Then the vision changed ; and he saw, as if in a wide field, the 
acts of his own being, from the first dawn of memory to the 
moment when he entered the water. They were all grouped 
and ranged in the order of succession of their happening, and he 

read the whole volume of existence at a glance From this 

condition of beatitude — at least, these were the last sensations he 
could remember — he awoke to consciousness, and consequently 
to pain, agony, and disappointment." 



MIND AND MATTER. 155 

within the range of our individual experience. 
If we were to pursue this subject it would lead 
us to some curious speculations as to our estimate 
of time, and the difference between the real and 
the apparent duration of life. The measure 
of time which we make by our own feelings is a 
very different matter from that which uncivilized 
man makes by the moon and stars, and which 
we now make by clocks and almanacks. The 
apparent duration of time is longer or shorter in 
proportion as a greater or smaller number of 
different states of mind follow each other in suc- 
cession. To a child, whose imagination is con- 
stantly excited by new objects, and whose temper 
passes more easily from one passion to another, a 
year is a much longer period of time than to the 
grown-up man. As we advance in age so do the 
years pass more rapidly. We may suppose the 
life of the vivacious butterfly, which exists only 
for a single season, to be apparently longer than 
that of the slowly moving tortoise, whose existence 
is prolonged for one or two centuries ; and that 
there is a similar difference, though in a less 
degree, between the enterprising man, whose 



156 MIND AND MATTEK. 

progress is crowded with events, and with, alter- 
nate hopes and fears, and that of another who, 
with more limited desires, keeps " the even tenor 
of his way."* 

* Experiments are not wanting which would seem to supply 
the means of an approximative measurement of the rapidity of 
mental acts. A very large proportion of astronomical observa- 
tions consist in noting the moment at which a star passes before 
the micrometer-threads of a telescope. The moment of this 
transit can be indicated, under the most favorable conditions, to 
a tenth of a second. Two senses are engaged in the operation, 
for while the observer watches the star, he listens to the strokes 
of the pendulum-clock, which stands near. When the star 
comes near the thread he notes its exact distance from it at a 
certain stroke of the pendulum, and then its exact distance past 
the thread at the next stroke. From a comparison of the distances 
on each side, the true moment of transit is estimated. Professor 
Bessel, of the Konigsberg Observatory, remarked that he evi- 
dently did not note the moment at which the star impinged on 
the threads synchronously with the other observers. Experi- 
ments were made to elucidate this point; and it was found, 
practically, that they all differed more or less from each other. 
Nicolai, of the Mannheim Observatory, also made experiments 
with Knorre of the Observatory at Nicolaief, and Clausen of 
Denmark. Knorre noted the true moment half a second later, 
and Clausen one-third of a second, while Bessel noted his observ- 
ation a second earlier than Knorre. It is not easy to say how 



MIND AND MATTER. 157 

During sleep ordinary impressions pass un- 
noticed. But impressions of a stronger kind 
rouse the attention, and in so doing put an end 
to sleep ; while those of an intermediate kind 
affect us in another way, by giving a peculiar 
character to our dreams. Ergates made the 
same remark in one of our former conversations, 
referring to acid in the stomach, and some other 
cases, as illustrating the subject. It occurs to 
me to add another example to those which he 
has adduced. It lately happened to myself to 
dream that some one had given me a shellfish in 
a shell something like that of a muscle ; that I 
ate it, and that after it had been swallowed, I 
felt it to be very acrid, and that it produced a 
pain in my throat. When I awoke I found that 

much, time should be allotted to perception, and how much to 
volition in cases of this kind. It is to be regretted that M. 
Nicolai stopped short in these experiments; for the habit of 
accuracy which a training in astronomical observation gives, is 
eminently useful in the observation of mental phenomena. One 
general fact is deducible from these remarks ; namely, that there 
is a very considerable difference as to the rapidity with which 
mental states succeed each other. 

14 



158 MIND AND MATTER. 

I labored under a sore throat, which must have 
suggested the dream. It is a curious fact that 
we may have a long dream in the act of waking 
from our sleep. A military officer informed me, 
that while serving in the Peninsular war he had 
frequently been roused from his sleep by the 
firing of a cannon near his tent, and that he had 
a dream, including a series of events, which 
might be distinctly traced to the impression 
made on his senses by the explosion. Facts of 
this kind have inclined Lord Brougham to the 
opinion that we never dream except while in the 
state of transition from being asleep to being 
awake. But I own that this seems to me to be 
a mistake. First, there is no sufficient proof of 
it being so ; and, secondly, we have a proof of 
the contrary in the fact that nothing is more 
common than for persons to moan, and even talk 
in their sleep without awaking from it. Even 
in the case of a dog, who is sleeping on the rug 
before the fire, if you watch him, you can 
scarcely doubt that he is sometimes dreaming 
though he still remains asleep. I should myself 
be more inclined to doubt whether we ever sleep 



MIND AND MATTEK. 159 

without some degree of dreaming. At any rate, 
not to dream seems to be, not the rule, but the 
exception to the rule : for it rarely happens that 
we awake without being sensible of some time 
having elapsed since we fell asleep ; which is in 
itself a proof that the mind has not been wholly 
unoccupied. That on such occasions we have 
no distinct recollection of our dreams proves 
nothing. Referring again to the instance of 
persons who walk in their sleep, we often find 
that they have not the smallest recollection of 
their having dreamed afterwards. It is 'only 
those dreams which affect us very strongly, and 
which occur immediately before we awake from 
sleep, that we really remember ; and even of 
these the impression is not in general sufficient 
for us to retain it for more than a very few mi- 
nutes. If a dream be remembered longer, it is 
only because we have thought of it after it oc- 
curred, and have thus given it a place in our 
memory which it could not have obtained other- 
wise. And this leads me to observe that, al- 
though memory does so little as to dreams, 
dreams throw some light on this wondrous fa- 



160 MIND AND MATTER. 

culty. I know not indeed what has happened to 
others, but it certainly has often happened to my- 
self to dream of something that had occurred in 
my boyish days, and of which, as it had not been 
present to my thoughts for many years, it might 
well be supposed that it was wholly forgotten. 
On one occasion, I imagined that I was a boy 
again, and that I was repeating to another boy, 
a tale with which I had been familiar at that 
period of my life, though I had never read it, 
nor thought of it since. I awoke and repeated 
it to myself at the time, as I believe accurately 
enough, but on the following day I had forgotten 
it again. We may conclude from this and from 
some other analogous facts, that many things 
which seem to be erased from our memory are 
not erased from it in reality ; that the impres- 
sion remains, and that if we are not conscious of 
it, it is merely because the secret spring has not 
been touched, which would bring it again under 
our observation. 

Ceites. What you have now mentioned shows 
that, however capricious and irregular during 
sleep the imagination may be, there are excep- 



MIND AND MATTER. 161 

tions to the general rule. I have heard of 
mathematicians who have solved problems, and 
of others who have composed poetry in their 
sleep. An acquaintance of mine, a solicitor, 
was perplexed as to the legal management of 
a case which concerned one of his clients. In a 
dream he imagined a method of proceeding which 
had not occurred to him when he was awake, and 
which he afterwards adopted with success. 

EunuLus. I may refer to some analogous 
instances which have come within my own 
knowledge. A friend of mine, a distinguished 
chemist and natural philosopher, has assured me 
that he has more than once contrived an appa- 
ratus for an experiment which he proposed to 
make in a dream ; and another friend, who com- 
bines mathematical with all sorts of knowledge 
besides, has solved problems in his sleep, which 
had puzzled him when awake. But these things 
are rare exceptions to the general rule. They do 
not, as it seems to me, at all controvert the opi- 
nion that the essential character of sleep is the 
suspension of volition ; and, on this hypothesis, 
they are easily explained. There are, as Ergates 

14* 



162 . MIND AND HATTEK. 

has observed, degrees of sleep ; and in a dream 
which occurs between sleeping and waking, the 
power of attention may be exercised, though not 
to the same extent as when we are completely 
awake. Besides this, however, it would indeed 
be a strange thing, in the crowded chapter of 
accidents, if among the vast number of com- 
binations which constitute our dreams, there 
were not every now and then some having the 
semblance of reality. Further, I suspect that in 
many of the stories of wonderful discoveries 
made in dreams, there is much of either mistake 
or exaggeration; and that if they could have 
been written down at the time, they would have 
been found to be worth little or nothing. Know- 
ing how imaginative a person Coleridge at all 
times was, I may, I hope, be excused for saying 
that it is more easy to believe that he imagined 
himself to have composed his poem of Kubla 
Khan in his sleep, than that he did so in reality. 
I may here refer to the experience of a distin- 
guished physiologist on this subject. " Some- 
times," says Muller, "we reason more or less 
accurately in our dreams. We reflect on 



MIND AND MATTEE. 163 

problems, and rejoice in their solution. But 
on awaking from such dreams the seeming 
reasoning is found to be no reasoning at all, 
and the solution over which we had rejoiced to 
be mere nonsense. Sometimes we dream that 
another proposes an enigma, that we cannot 
solve it, and that others are equally incapable of 
doing so, but that the person who proposed it 
himself gives the explanation. We are astonished 
at the solution, which we had so long endeavored 
to find. If we do not immediately awake, and 
afterwards reflect on this proposition of an enigma 
in our dream, and on its apparent solution, we 
think it wonderful ; but if we awake immediately 
after the dream, and are able to compare the 
answer with the question, we find that it was 
mere nonsense. I have at least several times 
observed this in my own case." * 

Ekgates. Still, without referring to such 
exercises of the intellect as Miiller has described 
in the passage which you have now quoted, it 
must be owned that there is often a remarkable 
degree of coherence in our dreams. A drama is 

* Matter's Physiology, translated by Baly, p. 147. 



164 MIND AND MATTEE. 

performed, including a series of events in which 
we ourselves are concerned, and having a mutual 
relation to each other. There are other actors in 
it, who seem to speak and act independently 
of ourselves, as if influenced by other motives, 
and aiming at other objects, with regard to which 
we do not concur, or to which we may be 
actually opposed. Scenes are presented to us, 
in which it seems that an intelligence is exercised, 
although we do not understand how that intel- 
ligence can be our own. How is it that these 
things happen ? I own that I search in vain for 
any very satisfactory explanation. 

Eubulus. Another question arises as to dreams, 
which it is even more difficult to answer than 
that which you have suggested. Are they mere- 
ly incidental effects of the existing order of 
things, as determined by the will of the Creator 
of the universe ; or do they answer any special 
purpose, and lead to any ulterior consequences ? 
In a machine of human invention effects arise 
which are truly incidental, that is, which were 
never contemplated or intended by the inventor. 
For instance, it was casually discovered that 



MIND AND MATTEK. 165 

an abundance of electricity may be obtained from 
the steam supplied by tbe boiler of a steam-en- 
gine. But such a result had never been anticipat- 
ed by those to whom we are indebted for this 
great invention. Does anything like this happen 
with regard to the machinery of the universe ? 
Is it not more probable that everything that 
occurs has been anticipated, and has its definite 
and appointed purpose ? I believe that no one 
has hitherto offered any certain or satisfactory 
explanation of the uses of the spleen, and that it 
is known that animals may live, and apparently in 
good health, after that organ has been removed. 
So, also, no satisfactory explanation has yet been 
offered of the functions of the thyroid gland 
or the renal capsules. Yet no one believes the 
formation of these organs to be merely inci- 
dental, or doubts that they have some special 
offices allotted to them. Dreams are, at any 
rate, an exercise of the imagination, and one 
effect of them may be to increase the activity of 
that important faculty during our waking hours. 
As they are influenced by our prevailing in- 
clinations, so they may help us to form a right 



166 MIND AND MATTER. 

i 

estimate of our own characters ; and assure dlyft 
would be presumptuous to say that they may not 
answer some still further purpose in the economy 
of percipient and thinking beings. 

Ceites. Before our conversation for this day 
is concluded, there is one other inquiry which I 
would make of Ergates. Believing as I do, that 
the percipient, conscious, and intelligent mind 
belongs to a mode of existence wholly different 
from that of the senseless bodies by which we 
are surrounded, still I cannot but admit that there 
must be certain changes taking place in the ner- 
vous system in connection with mental processes, 
some of these being transient in their nature, 
while others are so far permanent that they may 
not be effaced during the longest life. Kow, 
with regard to these changes, Ergates has stated 
that " their exact nature is a mystery which 
we have no means of unravelling, and that this is 
a kind of knowledge as much beyond our reach as 
that of the structure of the sun, or of the central 
parts of the earth." !Not disputing the correctness 
of this statement, yet I see no reason why we might 
not be able to form some general notion on the 



MIND AND MATTER. 167 

subject, and the following questions naturally- 
present themselves to us. Are the changes 
which the nervous system undergoes simply me- 
chanical ? or are they of the same kind as those 
chemical changes which take place in inorganic 
matter ? or do they rather belong to that class 
of phenomena which we refer to imponderable 
agents, such as electricity and magnetism, by 
virtue of which a piece of sealing-wax rubbed 
with a silk handkerchief draws light bodies to 
itself, or a bar of iron becomes endowed with the 
attractive property of a magnet ? 

Ekgates. Although these subjects have not 
been hitherto formally discussed, still you may 
on some points anticipate my answer from obser- 
vations which I have already made incidentally. 

The very little that we actually know may be 
comprised in a few words. 

1. The transmission of impressions from one 
part of the nervous system to another, or from 
the nervous system to the muscular and glan- 
dular structures, has a nearer resemblance to the 
effects produced by the imponderable agents to 
which you have alluded than to anything else. 



168 MIND AND MATTER. 

It seems very probable indeed, that the nervous 
force is some modification of that force which 
produces the phenomena of electricity and mag- 
netism ; and you may recollect that I have al- 
ready ventured to compare the generation of it 
by the action of the oxygenised blood on the 
grey substance of the brain and spinal chord, to 
the production of the electric force by the action 
of the acid solution on the metallic plates in the 
cells of a voltaic battery. 

2. "We know that the solid parts of the body 
are in a state of perpetual change. There is a 
constant influx of new materials supplied by the 
digestive organs, and in other ways ; and a corre- 
sponding efflux of the old materials by means of 
the various excretions, especially by that of the 
kidneys. The brain itself forms no exception to 
the general rule. We cannot otherwise account 
for its growth in the early part of life, nor for 
the alterations in its structure which arise as 
the consequence of disease, nor for those other 
changes which occur in extreme old age. The 
molecules of the brain in a man of twenty years 
of age are not the same with those which formed 



MIND AND MATTER. 169 

the brain of the same individual when he was 
ten years old, nor with those of which it will be 
composed when he arrives at the age of fifty 
years. The mind preserves its identity, but 
there is no corresponding identity of the corpo- 
real organ with which it is associated ; and we 
may even venture to assert that the brain of to- 
day is not precisely and in all respects the same 
with the brain of yesterday, and that it will not 
be the brain of to-morrow. 

3. "We cannot suppose that such deposition of 
new materials and abstraction of old ones can be 
effected by mere mechanical means, as you 
would take one brick from a building and sub- 
stitute another in its place. The elements of 
which the nervous system is composed exist in 
the blood, but they must undergo a new chemi- 
cal combination before they can be incorporated 
with it ; and in like manner they must undergo 
a chemical change of an opposite kind before 
they can re-enter the current of the circulation. 
The precise character of these chemical changes 
we have no means of ascertaining, but whatever 
it may be, there is reason to believe that in pro- 

15 



170 MIND AND MATTER. 

portion as the nervous system is more or less ex- 
ercised, whether it be in connection with mere 
corporeal functions, or with mental processes, so 
do they take place to a greater or less extent. 
As relating to this subject it may be observed 
that the nervous substance is distinguished from 
all the other tissues (with the exception of the 
bones) by the very large proportion of phosphorus 
which enters into its composition, amounting to 
1.5 parts in 100, and to as much as one-thirteenth 
of the solid matter which remains after the eva- 
poration of the water; and that one result of 
over-exercise of the nervous system is the elimi- 
nation of an unusual quantity of salts containing 
phosphorus by means of the secretion of the kid- 
neys. This fact was first observed by Dr. Prout, 
who has given it as his opinion " that the phos- 
phorus in organized beings is in some measure 
connected with nervous tissues and nervous ac- 
tion," and who in another place refers to "severe 
and protracted debilitating passions, and exces- 
sive fatigue, as the general exciting causes of" 
what he terms the " phosphatic diathesis."* 

* On the Stomach and Renal Diseases, third edition. 



MIND AND MATTER. 171 

4. With regard to those more permanent 
changes in the brain to which Crites has re- 
ferred as connected with the memory, and what 
is called the association of ideas, and, I may add, 
with our mental habits and dispositions as far as 
these are dependent on physical organization, I 
have nothing to offer beyond what I have ex- 
pressed already. There is, I apprehend, sufficient 
evidence that such changes do certainly take 
place, but as to their real nature we not only 
know nothing, but have no means of obtaining 
any actual knowledge. The improved micro- 
scopes of the present day have enabled us to 
unravel to a considerable extent the minuter tis- 
sues of the animal body ; but nevertheless, in an 
inquiry such as this, they afford us no assist- 
ance. There can be no doubt that there is as 
much in the animal structures beyond the reach 
of the microscope, as there is in the vast universe 
around us beyond the reach of the telescope ; so 
that, whatever we might thus discover, we may 
be sure that there is something further still. 
But let us suppose that it were otherwise, and 
(assuming the molecular hypothesis to be true) 



172 MIND AND MATTER. 

that with more perfect organs of sense, or more 
perfect instruments, we could trace exactly the 
changes which take place in the arrangement or 
aggregation of the ultimate molecules of the 
brain, I do not see that we should be much 
advanced in knowledge. We should be just as 
far from identifying physical and mental phe- 
nomena with each other as we are at present. 
The link between them would still be wanting, 
and it would be as idle to speculate on the nature 
of the relation between mind and matter, as on 
the proximate cause of gravitation, or of magne- 
tic attraction and repulsion. 



THE FIFTH DIALOGUE. 

Mental Faculties of Animals. — Their Relation to the Structure of 
the Brain. — Difficulty of the Inquiry, but some knowledge of 
it not beyond our Reach. — Cerebral Organs connected with the 
Animal Appetites and Instincts. — Organs subservient to the 
Intellect. — Questions as to the Uses of the Cerebral Con- 
volutions. — The Posterior Lobes of the Cerebrum. — The Corpus 
Callosum. — The Development of the Mental Faculties, how 
far dependent on the Perfection of the Senses, and other 
external Circumstances. — The Nature and Office of Instinct. — 
Intelligence not peculiar to Man, nor Instinct to the lower 
Animals. — Human Instincts. — The Social Instinct and the 
Moral Sense. — Some Instincts as necessary to Animal Existence 
as the Circulation of the Blood, and other mere Animal 
Functions. — Acquired Instincts transmitted from Parents to 
Offspring. — These considered with reference to Moral and 
Political Science. — The Social Instinct viewed as correcting 
or modifying other Instincts, and as being made more efficient 
by the greater Development of the Intellect. — The Religious 
Instinct. — Primary Traths of Buffier and Reid. 

It was one or two days after the conversation 
which has been just recorded, that we found 
ourselves in the afternoon on the side of a hill on 
which some sheep were scattered, watching the 
operations of the sheep-dog, who was collecting 
the flock previously to their being driven home for 
the night. This led to a conversation respecting 
the habits and faculties of animals ; and Eubulus 

15* 



174: MIND AND MATTER. 

gave us the history of a dog who, having been 
taken in a carriage, and by a circuitous route, to 
a distant place, nevertheless, some time after- 
wards, found his way back to his former home, 
having, as it appeared, gone across a tract of 
country with which he could have had no 
previous acquaintance. 

Ergates. There are very many well authenti- 
cated instances of the same thing. It is even 
said that dogs carried across the sea have travel- 
led back to their former place of abode, having 
established themselves on board ship for that 
purpose. Nor is this faculty peculiar to dogs. 
At least I have read an account of herds of 
cattle in New South Wales which, having been 
removed from their accustomed haunts to new 
pastures at a considerable distance, have never- 
theless returned, not by the road which they had 
gone before, but by going straight across the 
country, through wilds which they had never 
traversed previously. 

Eubulus. There are few subjects of inquiry 
more interesting to man than that of the moral 
and intellectual qualities of other animals, yet 



MIND AND MATTER. 175 

there are few of which, we know so little. There 
are, it is true, a good many scattered observations 
relating to it ; and I may especially refer to the 
very interesting collection of facts which are 
recorded in one of Lord Brougham's dialogues.* 
!No one, however, has devoted himself to such 
inquiries in the same way as many have done to 
other departments of knowledge. The papers 
of Frederic Cuvier are truly scientific, and con- 
tain much important matter, but they relate to 
a very limited number of animals. He began 
the study too late, and died too early, to make any 
considerable progress in it. Such an investiga- 
tion is, indeed, attended with peculiar difficulties, 
and to pursue it with advantage would afford 
ample occupation, even with the largest oppor- 
tunities, for the entire term of a man's life. 

Ergates. It may be, as I observed on a for- 
mer occasion, that some of those beings which 
are usually regarded as the very lowest form of 
animal life, have no endowments superior to those 
which belong to vegetables. Setting these aside, 

* Dissertations on Subjects connected with Natural Philosophy, 
by Henry Lord Brougham, vol. i. dial. 3. 



176 MIND AND MATTER. 

however, I apprehend that no one who considers 
the subject can doubt that the mental principle 
in animals is of the same essence as that of 
human beings ; so that even in the humbler 
classes we may trace the rudiments of those 
faculties, to which in their state of more com- 
plete development we are indebted for the 
grandest results of human genius. "We cannot 
suppose the existence of mere sensation without 
supposing that there is something more. In the 
stupid carp which comes to a certain spot, at a 
certain hour, or on a certain signal, to be fed, we 
recognise at any rate the existence of memory 
and the association of ideas. But we recognise 
much more than this in the dog who assists the 
shepherd in collecting his sheep in the wilds of 
the Welsh mountains. Locke and Dugald Stew- 
art following him, do not allow that "brute ani- 
mals have the power of abstraction." ISTow 
taking it for granted that abstraction can mean 
nothing more than the power of comparing our 
conceptions with reference to certain points to 
the exclusion of others ; as, for example, when 
we consider color without reference to figure, or 



MIND AND MATTER. 177 

figure without reference to color ; then I do not 
see how we can deny the existence of this faculty 
in other animals any more than in man himself. 
In this sense of the word, abstraction is a neces- 
sary part of the process of reasoning, which 
Locke defines as being " the perception of the 
agreement or disagreement of our ideas." But 
who can doubt that a dog reasons, while he is 
looking for his master, whom he has lost ; or 
(as in the instance of which we were speaking 
just now) when he is seeking his way home over 
an unknown country ? 

Ceites. But if my recollection be accurate, 
Dugald Stewart does not mean to deny that 
brute animals are capable of the simpler forms 
of reasoning. He merely states that being un- 
able to carry on processes of thought by the help 
of artificial signs (that is, of language), they have 
no power of arriving at general or scientific con- 
clusions.* 

Ergates. Without doubting for an instant 
the vast superiority of the human mind, still it 
appears to me to be difficult to say how far the 

* Moral Philosophy, vol. iii. p. 393, edit. 1827. 



178 MIND AND MATTER. 

capacities of brute animals are limited in these 
respects. It is not to be denied that the aid of 
language is necessary to the carrying on any 
long, or complex, process of reasoning. But we 
see, nevertheless, that those who are born deaf 
and dumb reason to a great extent ; and, on the 
other hand, it may well be questioned whether 
some animals are so wholly unprovided with 
language as Dugald Stewart supposes. 

Ettbulus. I am inclined to believe, with 
Ergates, that the minds of the inferior animals 
are essentially of the same nature with that of 
the human race, and that of those various and 
ever-changing conditions of it, which we term 
the mental faculties, there are none of which we 
may not discover traces more or less distinct in 
other creatures. Still, in the degree in which 
these faculties exist, there is a vast difference, 
not only between what they are in man and in 
other animals, but in other animals among them- 
selves.* And this leads us to another subject, 

* In regard to this question, Sir Henry Holland remarks : — 

" Wherever there is organization, even under the simplest form, 

there we are sure to find instinctive action, more or less in 



MIND AND MATTER. 179 

on which I shall be glad if Ergates can give ns 
some information. 

It being admitted that the brain is the mate- 
amount, destined to give the appropriate effect to it. This is 
true throughout every part of the animal series, from man and 
the quadrumana down to the lowest form of infusorial life. 
When we consider how vast this scale is — crowded with more 
than a hundred thousand recognized species, exclusively of those 
which fossil geology has disclosed to us — we may be well amazed 
by this profuse variety of instinctive action ; as multiplied in 
kind as are the organic forms with which it is associated, and all 
derived from one common power." 

" This great generalization, "_says a late writer in the Edinburgh 
Review, "includes another; and that is the community of func- 
tion of the ultimate constituents of all these organized beings, in 
so far as they can be determined. These constituents are micro- 
scopically minute hollow spheres of various forms, — oblate, dis- 
coid, oviod, spheroid, — containing small granular bodies termed 
nuclei. Such, and no other, is that primordial cell from which 
the perfect organism, whether it be animal or vegetable, is 
evolved, and within which operates that unconsciously acting 
principle of vitality which from so minute and almost formless 
an atom of matter, works out the entire mechanism of the frame 
in all its parts ; so that, finally, beauty, fitness, and an admirable 
working to beneficent ends, is the result. Within the narrow 
walls of that hollow spheroidal atom is contained, potentially, 
the whole scheme not only of the future physical life, but also 
of those instincts, faculties, and peculiarities which are trans- 



180 MIND AND MATTER. 

rial organ in connection with the mental princi- 
ple ; and it being also admitted that there is in 
the different species of animals, on the one hand, 
a great difference as to the extent of their moral 
and intellectual faculties, and, on the other hand, 
a not less remarkable difference in the size and 
formation of the brain ; we cannot well avoid the 
conclusion that these two orders of facts are, in 
a greater or less degree, connected with each 
other. I do not mean to infer from this connec- 
tion that the mind is always the same, and that 
the greater or less development of it depends 
altogether on the greater or less perfection of the 
material organ. It may well be supposed that 
the original difference is in the mind itself, and 

mitted hereditarily from parent to offspring. If these, then (and 
many not mentioned), be the wondrous endowments of these 
solitary primordial cells, what may we not predicate as to those 
masses of cells which constitute the effective portion of the brain 
and nervous system, and which the Great Artificer has prede- 
termined to be the organ of that intelligence which He created 
in His likeness ? Nothing we have said as to their probable 
functions approaches, we believe, in any degree to the reality. 
All is only a dim foreshadowing of truths as to the mutual action 
of mind and matter yet to be discovered." 



MIND AND MATTER. 181 

that the Creator has so ordained that the brain 
in the different species of animals should be such 
as will meet the requirements of the peculiar 
mind with which it is associated : — a view of the 
subject, which, if I am not misinformed, derives 
no small support from the researches of modern 
physiologists. I understand that the embryos of 
all the vertebrate animals have in the first in- 
stance so nearly the same character, that they 
cannot be distinguished from each other : that 
starting, as it were from one common point, the 
changes which the embryo undergoes differ, not 
only in different classes, but in different genera 
and species, as if something were superadded to 
the physical organization, by which those changes 
are regulated, and differently directed, thus giv- 
ing origin to that immense variety of forms of ani- 
mal life, which we see everywhere around us. 
However that may be (and I admit that it is idle, 
if not presumptuous, to speculate on a subject, 
as to which we are so entirely without the means 
of obtaining any actual knowledge), it does not 
at all affect the question as to the relation which 
exists between the organization of the brain and 

16 



182 MIND AND MATTER. 

the mental faculties. "What I wish to know is, 
how far does our knowledge of this relation really 
extend ? Is it possible, from any experience 
that we have of the habits and character of a 
particular tribe of animals, to predicate what 
kind of brain we shall find them to have on dis- 
section, or from our observations on the latter, 
to form an opinion as to their moral and intellec- 
tual capacities? 

Ergates. To a limited extent this knowledge 
is within our reach. If two brains were placed 
before me, in one of which the cerebral hemi- 
spheres were largely developed, while in the 
other they were very little developed, or al- 
together absent, I should at once pronounce the 
former to indicate the existence of a much greater 
intelligence than the latter. But I see no reason 
to doubt that we might learn more than this ; and 
that an individual, who in addition to ample 
opportunities of examining the brains of different 
animals by dissection, had equal opportunities 
of studying the habits and behavior of the same 
animals while alive, and who himself possessed 
the necessary qualities for such investigations, 



MIND AND MATTER. 183 

might, in the course of time, and after some 
years of thought and labor, arrive at some very 
interesting and satisfactory results. If, hitherto, 
so little progress has been made in this de- 
partment of knowledge, that is easily accounted 
for. The combination of opportunities which 
I have suggested, is of very rare occurrence, and, 
when it does occur, few persons are qualified 
to take proper advantage of it. It is, indeed, 
very far from being a matter of course that the 
anatomist, who has successfully pursued his own 
plain matter-of-fact science, should be the one 
best fitted for observing and comparing the 
fleeting phenomena of the mind, the study of 
which, presented as they are to us only through 
the medium of their external manifestations, 
must be proportionally more difficult as they 
differ from the only standard of comparison 
which we possess in our individual selves. 

Eubulus. Tou might have mentioned another 
difficulty, — that we seldom see other animals 
in their free and natural state, or otherwise than 
as being cowed and oppressed by the superiority 
of man. I suspect that, from this cause, we are 



184 MIND AND MATTER. 

led to "imder-estimate, on the whole, the moral 
and intellectual qualities of inferior creatures. 
How little should we know of man himself if we 
studied him only among the slaves of a Virginia 
planter! The rook confined in a cage would 
afford us but little information as to what the 
rook may be in the republic of his native rookery. 
The horse tied to his manger in our stables is a 
very different animal from the horse which is 
domesticated in his master's family in the Arab's 
tent; and he must be still more different from 
him who wanders over the prairies of America 
under the dominion of his chief. Even if we 
could live in a colony of rooks, or in a herd 
of wild horses, not having the means of com- 
municating with them, such as these animals 
certainly have among themselves, how difficult 
would it be for us to obtain any real knowledge as 
to their moral and intellectual condition ! How 
little should we know even of our own species 
in this respect, if we had not the power of 
mutually communicating our desires and thoughts 
through the medium of oral and written lan- 
guage! 



MIND AND MATTER. 185 

Ekgates. You will not then be surprised to 
learn how little has been done towards connect- 
ing physical organization and mental phenomena 
with each other. The observations of Magendie, 
Flourens, and some other physiologists, however 
interesting they may be, throw no light on the 
more difficult and recondite subject which we 
are now discussing. There is, indeed, only one 
fact connected with it which can be considered 
as well established. Those bodies, situated in 
the base of the brain, to which in the human 
subject we give the names of medulla oblongata, 
cerebellum, thalami, corpora striata, and tuber- 
cula quaolrigemina, and the parts corresponding 
to these in other vertebrate animals, are connected 
with that class of phenomena which belongs to 
the animal appetites and instincts ; and the two 
larger masses, which are placed above them, and 
are known as the cerebral hemispheres, are more 
especially subservient to the higher faculties 
belonging to the intellect. The proof of what I 
have now stated is that in the lower classes of 
vertebrate animals, in whom the appetites and 
instincts predominate over the intellect, the first- 

16* 



186 MIND AND MATTER. 

mentioned bodies form almost the entire brain, 
and that, very much as the intellect is more 
developed, so are the cerebral hemispheres more 
developed also ; the degree of their development 
being more remarkable in man than in any other 
animal.* Some apparent exceptions to this rule 
are easily explained. In birds, which are so 
much more than man, or than quadrupeds, under 
the dominion of instinct, the cerebral hemispheres 
appear at first sight to be of great size in pro- 
portion to the rest of the brain. But you may 
recollect that, on a former occasion, I explained 
that they are not so in reality, and that the only 
part, which can properly be compared with the 
hemispheres, is a layer of cerebral substance 
laid on the surface of two other bodies (the 
corpora striata), these being of an enormous size. 
Again, in some of the cetaceous and in one or 
two of the quadrumanous animals, the cerebral 
hemispheres are so large in proportion to the rest 
of the body as to approach very nearly to what 
they are in man himself. But their size is only 
one of the things to be taken into the account. 

* See Additional Note F. 



MIND AND MATTEE. 187 

Although a steam-engine of great power must 
be of certain dimensions, much will depend on 
its peculiar construction. So it probably is with 
regard to the cerebral hemispheres. They con- 
sist of two parts, the white, medullary or fibrous 
substance, which forms the greater portion of 
their bulk, and the more vascular gray substance, 
which is expanded on their surface. I stated 
formerly that the latter is supposed to be the part 
in which the nervous force is generated ; and 
therefore, the most important of the two structures. 
The surface of the hemispheres is formed into 
folds, or convolutions, and as the fissures by which 
these are separated are deeper and more nume- 
rous, so does the gray bear a larger proportion to 
the medullary substance. In animals of a very 
low degree of intelligence, in the kangaroo for 
example, the convolutions are almost entirely 
wanting. In man they are more remarkable 
as to number and depth than in any other animal, 
and hence some very eminent physiologists, not 
without some show of reason, have been led 
to believe that it is by his organization in this 
respect that he is adapted to the exercise of 



188 MIND AND MATTER. 

that high degree of intelligence which places 
him at so vast a distance above the rest of the 
animal creation.* 

Whether this hypothesis be or be not well- 
founded, it is to be observed that it is not merely 
as to its greater volume, and the greater extent 
of the convolutions of the cerebrum, that the 
brain of man differs from that of other animals. 
Comparing it with the brain of the other mam- 
malia (and it is only with these that it much 
admits of comparison in reality), we find that the 
posterior lobes of the cerebrum are almost pecu- 
liar to the human race. The only other animals 
in which they exist are those of the tribe of 
monkeys, and in them they are of a much smaller 
size than they are in man. The absence of this 
part of the brain includes the absence of what 
seems to be a special organ situated in the pos- 
terior elongation of the lateral ventricle, known 
by anatomists under the name of the hippocampus 
minor ; and it is worthy of notice, that even in 
monkeys, who are not altogether without the 
posterior lobes, this organ is wanting. The cor- 

* See Additional Note G. 



MIND AND MATTER. 189 

pus callosum is the name given to a broad thick 
band of nervous fibres which unites the two 
cerebral hemispheres, as if for the purpose of 
bringing them into harmonious action with each 
other. In the kangaroo, which I have already 
mentioned as having a very low degree of intel- 
ligence, the corpus callosum is altogether wanting. 
This fact of itself might lead us to conjecture that 
some important office is allotted to it ; and the 
• opinion is confirmed by observations made on 
the human subject. Cases are on record in 
which, from an original malformation, this organ 
was wanting either wholly or in part. In none 
of them could it be said that the intellectual 
faculties were altogether deficient. But in all 
of them there was an incapability of learning, 
producing an apparent dulness of the intellect, so 
that the individuals were unfit for all but the 
most simple duties of life.* 

Eubuxus. I grant that you have sufficiently 
established the proposition with which you set 
out. At the same time it would seem that the 

* See Mr. Paget's and Mr. Henry's observations in the Medico- 
Chirurgical Transactions, vols. xxix. and xxxi. 



190 MIND AND MATTEK. 

organization of the brain does not indicate the 
actual extent to which the mental faculties are 
exercised, nor anything more than the capability 
of exercising them. Having certain original 
endowments, which differ in different indi- 
viduals, the mind is made what it is by the force 
of external circumstances. How different was 
that of the savage of Aveyron from what it 
might have been if he had been trained to early 
habits of obedience and self-denial, and had 
been taught to make use of those powers of 
attention and reflection which God has conferred 
to a greater or less extent on all of us, but which 
run to waste if neglected. It is by no means 
impossible that in some nation of savages there 
may be an individual with such natural endow- 
ments, that, if placed under exactly similar cir- 
cumstances, he might have become another 
Newton ; and we may be assured that Newton 
would have been quite different from what he 
proved to be, if he had been born and bred 
among the aborigines of Australia. The exter- 
nal circumstances on which the mind more 
immediately depends are the organs of sense, as 



MIND AND MATTER. 191 

it is through them that all knowledge is original- 
ly derived, and as without them it would have 
none of the materials of thought. The mind of 
an individual who labors under congenital blind- 
ness, or congenital deafness, cannot fail to be 
imperfect as compared with that of others, 
except where great pains are bestowed on the 
application of those means which science has 
furnished for supplying the deficiency ; and the 
imperfection must be greater still in those in- 
stances in which these two calamities are unhap- 
pily combined. 

Ekgates. You may extend your observations 
to other animals, and add, that as among them 
there is a considerable difference as to the 
structure and relative value of the organs of 
sense, so this must be taken into the account 
if we would form even a rough estimate (and we 
can form no other) of their mental condition. 
In birds the eye is a more complicated, and 
evidently a more perfect, organ than it is in our 
own species, or in the mammalia generally. The 
eye of an eagle is nearly as large as that of an 
elephant; he has a wider range of vision, and 



192 MIND AND MATTEK. 

can distinguish objects at a distance at which 
they would be to us altogether imperceptible. 
In this respect he has means of obtaining know- 
ledge which man does not possess, and so far has 
an advantage over us. Having the power of 
ascending to the higher regions of the atmo- 
sphere, it is plain that the external world must 
be presented to him under a very different aspect 
from that under which it is presented to ourselves. 
But this is no solitary instance. There are many 
other animals which have organs of sense more 
perfect, and many others which have them less 
perfect, than they are in the human race ; and 
whatever that difference may be, it must lead to 
a like result by modifying their perceptions, and, 
if I may be allowed the expression, their notions, 
of things external to themselves. 

Eubulus. We cannot suppose it to be other- 
wise. The astronomer who contemplates the 
planets and the Milky "Way, and discovers 
revolving stars and remote nebulae by means 
of the telescope, may be regarded, as far as the 
heavenly bodies are concerned, as being endowed 
with another sense, so that the impressions which 



MIND AND MATTER. 193 

they produce on his mind must be quite different 
from those which they produce on the mind of 
the peasant, who knows nothing of them beyond 
that which is disclosed to his unassisted vision. 
But how much greater difference would there 
be if his eye were so constructed that, without 
the aid of glasses, it answered the purpose of 
a telescope for distant objects, and of a micro- 
scope for others ! 

Eegates. The dog distinguishes external ob- 
jects from each other less by his sense of sight 
than by his sense of smell, of which last we 
ourselves make comparatively little use. The 
whiskers of a cat, each having a special nerve 
belonging to it, form a much more delicate organ 
of touch than the human fingers. There is rea- 
son to believe that some insects are enabled to 
take cognisance of the electric state of the at- 
mosphere, as we take cognisance of heat and 
cold. The eyes of insects are very different 
from the eyes of the higher classes of animals, 
consisting sometimes of as many as a thousand 
hexagonal and transparent plates arranged, not 

11 



194 MIND AND MATTEE. 

in the same plane, but at angles to each other, so 
as to form altogether a large portion of a sphere, 
each having belonging to it what seems to be its 
own peculiar retina. With eyes such as these 
the vision of insects must be very different from 
ours, having an enormous range, with no such 
distinct picture as is formed on the human retina, 
and probably affording its possessor less perfect 
means of distinguishing near and distant objects 
from each other. On the other hand, the mole 
has an imperfect eye, and the mus typhlus, or 
subterraneous rat, the proteus, and the siren, are 
altogether deprived of the sense of sight. It is 
plain that the relations of these animals to the 
external world, and their conceptions of objects 
external to themselves, must differ according 
to the difference in their respective faculties 
of sense. 

Still, as Frederic Cuvier justly observes, "we 
must not, therefore, exaggerate the influence of 
the organs of sense on the mental functions ; nor 
can we admit the doctrine which some authors 
have held, that the perfection of the intellect de- 



MIND AND MATTER. 195 

pends very much on the greater or less perfec- 
tion of these physical organs."* This is, indeed, 
clearly an hypothesis unsupported by facts. The 
eye and ear of the seal are so constructed that he 
must have very moderate powers of sight and 
hearing, and, except through the medium of his 
whiskers, it may be said that he has no sense 
of touch at all. Nevertheless, the philosopher 
whom I have just named, who had ample oppor- 
tunities of studying the habits of the seals in the 
Jwrdin des J°lantes, describes them as being 
possessed of intelligence above the average of 
that which belongs even to the higher classes 
of the mammalia.f 

Ettbtjlus. The remarks which you have just 
now made are equally applicable to the hypo- 
thesis which some one has advanced, that man is 
made what he is by the possession of the hand, 
as a more perfect organ of prehension peculiar to 
himself ; and thus we fall back on your original 
proposition, that, as far as his physical organiza- 
tion is concerned, it is in that of the brain alone 

* Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, tome xvi. p. 54. 
f Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, tome xvh. p. 397. 



196 MIND AND MATTER. 

that we are to look for the evidence of his supe- 
riority to other creatures. 

Okites. I may now venture to make an observ- 
ation, which I should have made before, if I had 
not been unwilling to interrupt the conversation. 
"When you speak of instinct, as contradistinguish- 
ed to the higher faculties of the intellect, I con- 
clude that you refer to it as a principle by which 
animals are induced, independently of experi- 
ence and reasoning, to the performance of certain 
voluntary acts, which are necessary to their pre- 
servation as individuals, or the continuance of 
the species, or in some other way convenient to 
them. Now I would ask if it be quite clear that 
this distinction is well founded ? Has it not been 
the opinion of some physiologists that by a care- 
ful analysis of what are called instinctive actions, 
they may be traced to the operation of experi- 
ence, quite as much as those which are more 
palpably derived from this source ? 

Eegates. You may refer especially to the 
first Dr. Darwin, whose great, but too dis- 
cursive genius, was apt to travel too fast for the 
cautious pursuits of science. Let me state a 



MIND AND MATTER. 197 

few facts, and then leave yon to jndge for your- 
self. 

Food is required because life cannot be main- 
tained without it. But no one under ordinary 
circumstances thinks of this ultimate object. 
We have an uneasy sensation which we call 
hunger, and it is merely to remove this sensation 
that we are led to eat. This is the simplest form 
of instinct, and it goes far towards explaining 
others which are more complicated. The desire 
for food is the same in the newly-born child as 
in the grown-up man ; and when applied to his 
mother's breast he knows at once how to obtain 
it by bringing several pairs of muscles of his 
mouth and throat successively into action, mak- 
ing the process of suction. The newly-born calf 
needs no instruction to enable him to balance 
himself on his four legs, to walk, and seek the 
food with which he is supplied by his mother. 
The duckling hatched by the hen, as soon as his 
muscular powers are sufficiently developed, is 
impelled by the desire to enter the neighboring 
pond, and, when in the water, without example 
or instruction, he calls certain muscles into ac- 



17 



* 



198 MIND AND MATTER. 

tion, and is enabled to swim. When a sow is 
delivered of a litter, each young pig as it is born 
runs at once to take possession of one of his 
mother's nipples, which he considers as his pe- 
culiar property ever afterwards. So the bee 
prepares his honey-comb, and the wasp his pa- 
per nest, independently of all experience or in- 
struction. It is worth your while to refer to the 
luminous exposition which Lord Brougham has 
given of the mathematical accuracy with which 
the former does his work. Yet I do not see that 
it is at all more marvellous than what we see in 
the young calf. It would require a profound 
knowledge of mechanics, and a long investiga- 
tion, to determine beforehand what muscles 
should be called into action, and in what order 
they should act, to enable him to balance him- 
self on his feet, to stand and walk. Yet all this 
he accomplishes at once, as if it were a mere 
matter of course. I do not see how these and a 
thousand other things can be explained on the 
hypothesis of Darwin, or otherwise than by 
supposing that certain feelings exist which lead 
to the voluntary exercise of certain muscles, and 



MIND AND MATTER. 199 

to the performance of certain acts, without any 
reference at the time to the ultimate object for 
which these acts are required.* 

* Yery many of the mental conditions observed in man, have 
their counterpart in the lower animals. They sleep, they dream, 
they become insane. They have also intermediate states between 
these. They have then - variations in temper as man has. The 
horse will weep like Ins master, and the big tears course as 
rapidly down his cheeks from grief and paiu. In rabies the 
mental character of the horse is wonderfully changed. If before 
the attack of the disease he had been naturally good-tempered 
and attached to his rider or his groom, he will recognize his 
former friend and seek his caresses during the intervals between 
the paroxysms of fury, and he will bend on him one of those 
piteous, searching looks which once observed will never be for- 
gotten. Mr. Youatt attended a horse in rabies, and remarks : 
" He would bend his gaze upon me, as if he would search me 
through and through, and would prevail on me, if I could, to 
relieve him from some dreadful evil by which he was threatened. 
He would then press his head against my bosom, and keep it 
there for a minute or more." Yet in the paroxysms this touching 
desire for sympathy and solace would change (and that almost 
instantaneously) into the most maddened fury, or else the most 
singular treachery. There is the desire for mischief for its own 
sake, and there is frequently the artful stratagem to allure the 
victim within his reach. Not a motion is made by the bystanders 
of which the rabid horse is not conscious, nor does a person ap- 
proach whom he does not recognize ; but he labors under one 
^l-absorbing feeling — an intense longing to devastate and destroy. 



200 MIND AND MATTER. 

Eubultjs. It would seem that it is in the pro- 
portion which their instincts and intelligence 
bear to each other that the difference between 
the mind of man and that of other animals 
chiefly consists. Reasoning is not peculiar to 
the former, nor is instinct peculiar to the latter. 
Even as regards insects, which are generally, and 
properly, regarded as being below the vertebrate 
animals in the scale of existence, and whose 
nervous system is of so single a structure as 
to admit of no comparison with that of the 
human subject, we cannot well hesitate to believe 
that they are not altogether deprived of that 
higher faculty which enables ourselves to apply 
the results of our experience to the new circum- 
stances under which we are placed. 

" Esse apibus partem divinse mentis " 

Is no mere fiction of poetry. It is by instinct 
that the bee collects his honey, and constructs 
the hexagonal cells of his honey-comb (always 
according to the same pattern) from the wax 
furnished for that purpose by his own secretions. 
But instinct will not account for all that he does 
besides. When a swarm is transferred to a new 



MIND AND MATTER. 201 

hive placed among many others, at first they are 
found frequently mistaking other hives for their 
own, and it is only by experience that they are 
taught after some time to distinguish the par- 
ticular hive in which their queen is lodged.* 
Their habit is to build their honey-comb from 
above downwards, attaching it to the upper part 
of the hive. On one occasion, when a large 
portion of the honey-comb had been broken off, 
they pursued another course. The fragment had 
somehow become fixed in the middle of the hive, 
and the bees immediately began to erect a new 
structure of comb on the floor, so placed as to 
form a pillar supporting the fragment and pre- 
venting its further descent. They then filled up 
the space above, joining the comb which had 
become detached to that from which it had 
been separated, and they concluded their labors 
by removing the newly-constructed comb below ; 
thus proving that they had intended it to answer 
a merely temporary purpose. I state this on the 
authority of a gentleman whose attention has 

* Principles of Physiology, by W". Carpenter, M.D. Second 
edition, p. 224. 



202 MIND AND MATTER. 

been much directed to these and similar in- 
quiries. 

The observations of M. Dujardin place it 
beyond a doubt that bees have some means of 
communicating with each other, answering the 
purpose of speech. When a saucer containing 
syrup was placed in a recess in a wall, and a 
bee conveyed to it on the end of a stick which 
had been also smeared with syrup, he remained 
there for five or six minutes, and then flew back 
to his hive. In about a quarter of an hour thirty 
other bees issued from the same hive, and came 
to regale themselves on the contents of the saucer. 
The bees from the same hive continued their 
visits as long as the sugar remained in the state 
of syrup and fit for their purpose, but none came 
from another hive in the neighborhood. "When 
the sugar was dry, the saucer was deserted, 
except that every now and then a straggler 
came, as if to inspect it, and if he found that by 
the addition of water it was again in a state of 
syrup, his visit was presently followed by that 
of numerous others.* 

* Annales des Sciences Natnrelles, xviii. tome xvii. p. 233. 



MIND AND MATTEE. 203 

If even a portion of the observations made by 
the younger Huber on ants be well founded, 
these little creatures must be regarded as possess- 
ing, in addition to their instincts, no small por- 
tion of intelligence. It is observed by a modern 
writer that " there is hardly a mechanical pursuit 
in which insects do not excel. They are excel- 
lent weavers, house-builders, architects. They 
make diving-bells, bore galleries, raise vaults, 
construct bridges. They line their houses with 
tapestry, clean them, ventilate them, and close 
them with admirably fitted swing-doors. They 
build and store warehouses, construct traps in 
the greatest variety, hunt skilfully, rob and 
plunder. They poison, sabre, and strangle their 
enemies. They have social laws, a common 
language, division of labor, and gradations of 
rank. They maintain armies, go to war, send 
out scouts, appoint sentinels, carry off prisoners, 
keep slaves, and tend domestic animals. In 
short, they are a miniature copy of man rather 
than that of the inferior vertebrata." Of these 
things which have been thus graphically describ- 
ed, mnch may indeed be referred to the opera- 



204: MIND AND MATTER. 

tion of instincts, or to what Dr. Carpenter terms 
" unconscious cerebration ; "* "but surely it in- 
volves a considerable petitio principii not to 
refer a part of them to a higher principle, bear- 

* " Most persons who attend to their own mental operations 
are aware that when they have been occupied for some time 
about a particular subject, and have then transferred their atten- 
tion to some other, the first, when they returned to the considera- 
tion of it, may be found to present an aspect very different from 
that which it possessed before it was put aside, notwithstanding 
that the mind has since been so completely engrossed with the 
second subject as not to have been consciously directed towards 
the first in the interval. Now a part of this change may depend 
upon the altered condition of the mind itself, such as we experience 
when we take up a subject in the morning with all the vigor 
which we derive from the refreshment of sleep, and find no 
difficulty in overcoming difficulties and in disentangling perplexi- 
ties which checked our further progress the night before, when 
we were too weary to give more than a languid attention to the 
points to be made out, and could use no exertion in the search 
of their solutions. But this by no means accounts for the entirely 
new development whieh the subject is frequently found to have 
undergone when we return to it after a considerable interval ; a 
development which cannot be reasonably explained in any other 
mode than by attributing it to the intermediate activity of the 
cerebrum, which has in this instance automatically evoked the 
result without our consciousness." — Dr. Carpenter: Human 
Physiology Fifth Edition. 



MIND AND MATTER. 205 

ing a resemblance, however remote, to human 
intelligence. 

It would be easy to extend observations such 
as these to other parts of the animal creation. 
We see, among the mammalia and birds, even 
those which are the least intelligent nevertheless 
availing themselves of the lessons of experience, 
and adapting their proceedings to the new cir- 
cumstances under which they are placed ; while, 
with respect to the gregarious animals, it is plain 
that their association could not be maintained 
unless they had certain rules of conduct among 
themselves, and the power of communicating 
their wants and feelings to each other by some 
kind of language, however imperfect it may be. 
On the other hand, man, gifted as he is with 
such (comparatively) vast capacity of memory 
and reflection' — with such powers of observation ; 
having the gift, not merely of language, but of 
articulate speech, and the use of words — •" those 
shadows of the soul, those living sounds, which 
render the mere clown an artist — nations immor- 
tal — orators, poets, philosophers, divine ! "* — by 

* The Philosophy of Language, comprehending Universal 

18 



206 MIND AND MATTER. 

means of which he lays up stores of knowledge, 
not only for himself and for those now in exist- 
ence, but also for generations which are to come ; 
living not merely in the present time, but also in 
the past, and even in the future ; whose aspira- 
tions lead him to inquiries of a higher nature, 
beyond the visible and tangible world in which he 
is placed ; — even man, such as he is,, is in many 
respects the creature of instincts; and what 
would he be without them? As Ergates has 
already remarked, when he seeks food it is at the 
moment, not because his reason and experience 
tell him that he would die without it, but because 
he is impelled to do so by the uneasy sensations 
which the want of it occasions. So also is thirst 
an instinct. The child is attracted to the mother's 
breast by instinct. The love of the parent for 
the child, and the desire to avoid danger and 
prolong life, are instincts also. 

Man could not exist as a solitary being. He 
has neither swiftness of feet, nor any natural 
means of oifence and defence, which would en- 

G-rammar, by Sir John Stoddart, LL.D., second edition, p. 1. 
See Additional Note H. 



MIND AND MATTER. 207 

able him to compete with the buffalo, the lion, 
or the wolf. It would have been of little avail 
to him if the Creator had left it to himself to 
leam by hard experience, and any wisdom of 
his own, that he can procure his own safety, 
and his means of subsistence, only by associat- 
ing with others. The desire to live in society is 
as much an instinct in him as it is in the bee, or 
the beaver, or the prairie dog. Ought not this 
to settle the disputed question as to the existence 
of a moral sense ? For how could mankind live 
in society, helping and protecting each other, 
and joining in common pursuits, if they were 
not so constructed as to sympathize with each 
other in their joys and sorrows, and if they did 
not feel individually that they owe to others 
what they expect others to offer them in return. 
Experience and reason, and if you please self- 
interest, tend to confirm, to refine, to exalt these 
sentiments, but they do not create them. The 
child is led to seek the society of other children 
by an impulse which he cannot resist, and which 
is independent of any intellectual operation. 
But having done so, his moral qualities, which 



208 MIND AND MATTER. 

would otherwise have remained in abeyance, 
are gradually developed, and (except there be 
some actual imperfection of the mental faculties) 
the power of distinguishing right from wrong, 
justice from injustice, follows, as a matter of 
necessity, the result of an innate principle, and 
not of anything acquired. 

Orites. All that you have now stated leads 
to this conclusion, that although it is only as to 
the higher faculties of the mind that mankind 
propius accedunt ad Deos / that it is only as to 
these that the Deity has created man in his own 
image ; it is not less true that as to mere animal 
existence these are of much less importance than 
the lower faculties of instinct. If the Deity 
had no other intention than that of maintaining 
on the surface of the globe a large number of 
living beings susceptible of enjoyment and in- 
dulging in sensual gratifications, with a very 
small proportion of painful feelings, such inten- 
tion would have been sufficiently carried out by 
the creation of animals endowed with imperfect 
memory, with no capability of experience, with 
no thought as to the future, and acting solely 



MIND AND MATTER. 209 

under the direction of instinct. That the scheme 
of creation is not thus limited, and that it tends 
to some ulterior and grander object, we may 
well conclude from the existence of that principle 
of intelligence, the dawning of which we observe 
in the lower animals, and which we find more 
completely developed in the human race. 

Ehbultjs. It seems, indeed, to be as you have 
stated, that animals may, and some animals 
probably do, exist by means of instinct alone, and 
without possessing any of the superior intellectual 
faculties. The converse of this proposition, how- 
ever, does not hold good, and it is plain that the 
latter would be quite insufficient unless they 
were accompanied by instinct. "Without it, ex- 
perience and the anticipation of what is to come, 
founded on the recollection of the past, would 
be the only guide, and these of course could not 
belong to the newly-created or newly-born animal. 
Indeed, we cannot but suppose that when man 
first began to exist, and for some generations after- 
wards, the range of his instincts must have been 
much more extensive than it is at the present 
time. We see the infant first deriving nourish- 

18* 



210 MIND AND MATTER. 

ment from his mother's breast, but when the 
period of lactation is over, the experience of his 
parents supplies him with the fit kind of food 
derived from other sources. The absence of such 
experience must, in the first instance, have been 
supplied by a faculty which he does not now 
possess (but which we see manifested in the 
lower animals), directing him to seek that which 
is nutritious, and to avoid that which is not so, or 
which is actually poisonous. It is easy to con- 
ceive that much besides in the habits and actions 
of human beings which seem now to be the 
results of experience and imitation, was ori- 
ginally derived from instinct ; and indeed there 
are many things which cannot well be explained 
otherwise. I do not venture to say'that from 
this source he first derived the use of fire ; yet it 
does not seem that in such an instinct there 
would be anything more remarkable than in that 
which leads the bee, with the skill of a mathe- 
matician, to construct his hexagonal cells ; and 
considering how terrible and destructive an agent 
fire, if discovered accidentally, must have ap- 
peared to be, it is difficult to conceive how 



MIND AND MATTER. 211 

uncivilized and untutored man could have been 
led by mere experience to convert it to the 
purposes of his own comfort and convenience. 
It may be further observed that except in the 
tropical regions of the globe fire is almost as 
necessary to his existence as food or clothing ; 
and that without it he could not have filled that 
place which he seems to have been destined to 
fill in the creation. It was probably under the 
influence of views similar to these that the 
Heathen mythologists invented the fable of 
Prometheus having stolen it from the Gods. 

On the other hand, if we study the habits of 
other animals, we cannot doubt that there are 
many which, however much they are dependent 
on their instincts, profit also by experience, 
though in a less degree than man ; and it is pro- 
bable that these, not less than the human species, 
when first called into existence were endowed 
with instincts which they do not now possess. 

Eegates. Continuing your line of argument, 
I may observe that the circulation of the blood, 
respiration, digestion, the secretion of the kidneys, 
being immediately necessary to life, are nearly 



212 MIND AND MATTER. 

the same under all circumstances, being subject 
to no material variation except when interrupted 
by accident or disease. There are certain in- 
stincts to which the same observation may be 
applied. A patient in a lunatic asylum may, as 
a consequence of his malady, lose the instinct 
which constitutes the desire for food, so that he 
would die of inanition if food were not introduced 
into his stomach by artificial means; or the 
instinct of self-preservation may be so over- 
powered, that he commits suicide. But other- 
wise these particular instincts are as invariable 
as the functions of the vital organs. There are 
other instincts which are intended to adapt the 
animal to the peculiar situation in which he is 
placed, and liable to vary with the circumstances 
for which they are required. Acquired habits 
in several successive generations become per- 
manent, and assume the character of instincts, 
and thus we have the opportunity of seeing new 
instincts generated. I walked in the fields during 
the autumn with a young pointer dog which had 
never been in the fields before. He not only 
pointed at a covey of partridges, but remained 



MIND AND MATTER. 21 



o 



motionless, like a well-trained dog. M. Magendie 
relates an analogous anecdote of a retriever. He 
bought him as a puppy in England, and took him 
to France. Though never having been trained for 
the purpose, he knew his duty as a retriever, and 
performed it sufficiently well when taken into the 
fields. Mr. Andrew Knight has given an account 
of other facts of the same kind. It is probable 
that if we had the opportunity of studying the 
conditions of the herds of wild horses which 
roam over the prairies of America Ave should 
find that they are born with instincts which their 
ancestors did not possess in their domesticated 
state, and which they would lose if again brought 
under subjection to man. 

Crites. May not the habit of using the 
right hand in preference to the left be one of 
the acquired instincts to which you have now 
referred ? 

Ergates. Certainly it may be so. But it is 
at least as probable that it was an original 
instinct. We know that some individuals are 
left-handed, but the proportion of them is very 
small, and I am not aware that there has ever 



214 MIND AND MATTER. 

been a left-handed nation. The reason of our 
being endowed with this particular instinct is 
sufficiently obvious. How much inconvenience 
would arise where it is necessary for different 
individuals to co-operate in manual operations, 
if some were to use one hand and some the 
other ? 

However that may be, we must suppose that 
the conversion of an acquired habit into an 
instinct is attended with some actual change in 
the organization of the brain ; and in this there 
is nothing more remarkable than in many other 
changes which occur in animals in consequence 
of an alteration in their mode of life. Thus the 
thorough-bred horse has more compact bones 
and a thinner skin than the cart-horse. The 
elephant which had been preserved in a mass 
of ice on the borders of the Northern ocean was 
covered with hair, which is altogether wanting 
among his kindred of the South ; and still more 
remarkable examples of changes of this kind 
may be found among our domesticated animals, 
especially dogs. 

Ceites. This is a subject which is not only 



MIND AND MATTEK. 215 

interesting as a matter of science, but also of 
considerable practical importance. Setting aside 
his physical condition, and the influence of 
another climate on his health, would the infant 
born of Esquimaux parents, living in huts of 
snow, in the dreary regions of the north, be 
equally fitted with the negro to assume the 
habits and mode of life of those whose .ancestors 
have resided during manv successive venerations 
under a tropical sun, amid the luxuriant vegeta- 
tion of a tropical climate ? or would the infant 
negro be fitted to undertake the life of the 
Esquimaux ? The negroes of Hayti, who passed 
at once from ■ a state of slavery into that of 
freedom and the imitation of civilized life, are 
already relapsing into barbarism, and returning, 
in spite of the humanising influence of Chris- 
tianity, to the superstitions of their African 
progenitors. In like manner, nations become 
adapted to the peculiar mode of government 
under which their ancestors have lived ; and 
experience has shown that it is equally dan- 
gerous suddenly to change a despotism for a free 
constitution, or the latter for a despotism. The 



216 MIND AND MATTEE. 

original founders of the French revolution had 
grand objects in view. They saw how much 
free institutions tend to elevate the character 
and extend the happiness of mankind, and they 
had formed a just estimate of the opposite ten- 
dency of the former government of their country. 
But they overlooked the fact, that no govern- 
ment is good for which those who are to live 
under it are unprepared, and they failed by 
attempting too much. If they had been content 
with beginning the work of regeneration with a 
prospect of a 'further but gradual improvement 
in the course of after generations, it is probable 
that their country would never have groaned 
under the tyranny of the mob, nor have sought 
refuge from it under the milder despotism of the 
Emperor. On the same principle it is that 
civilization can be only gradually advanced ; 
and that all that the Czar Peter could accom- 
plish was to produce an outward semblance of 
it in his capital, while the masses of the large 
population of his empire remained as barbarous 
as they were before he attempted to force 
civilization on them. The sudden emancipation 



MIND AND MATTER. 217 

of the negroes in the slave-holding states of 
America would be productive of nothing but 
misery and ruin to themselves and the white 
population ; while there is good reason to believe 
that a different result would follow if they and 
their masters were gradually prepared for so 
great a change during even two or three succes- 
sive generations. 

Eubttltts. In what you have now said you 
have in part anticipated some observations which 
I was about to offer. "While the study of in- 
stincts in other animals is interesting to the na- 
turalist and physiologist, that of the instincts of 
the human race is not less interesting to the mo- 
ral, and, I may add, to the political philosopher. 
The majority of instincts belonging to man re- 
semble those of the inferior animals, inasmuch 
as they relate to the preservation of the indivi- 
dual and the continuation of the species. To 
these the social instinct is superadded, not in- 
deed peculiar to man, but in him attaining a 
greater degree of development than in other 
creatures. This may be regarded as being in 
many respects antagonistic to the other instincts ; 

19 



218 MIND AND MATTER. 

and in order that society should exist, it is neces- 
sary that the latter should be in a great degree 
subjected to the former. The first impulse of a 
hungry man, not less than that of a hungry wolf, 
is to possess himself of food wherever he finds 
it. When Dr. Davy, on the bank of a river in 
Ceylon, found the young alligator just escaping 
from his egg, the newly-born animal, assuming 
an attitude of defiance, bit the stick which op- 
posed his progress. So the natural disposition 
of man is to defy opposition and resent injury. 
The child who can scarcely walk, beats the table 
against which he has struck his head. The social 
instinct is intended not to extinguish but to 
modify and correct his other instincts. But for 
the attainment of this object it is not in itself 
sufficient. It requires the aid of experience, 
education, example, and reason. In proportion 
as the intellectual faculties are more perfect, so 
is the social instinct more efficient. The gre- 
garious elephant is more intelligent than the 
solitary tiger. As the dog is more intelligent 
than the cat, so has he social and moral qualities 
which the latter does not possess; and in like 



MIND AND MATTER. 219 

manner human society is a more perfect institu- 
tion than that of any other animals which live in 
association. Nor must we omit the operation of 
another cause which mainly contributes to the 
attainment of that higher degree of civilization 
in which the sentiment of duty prevails over the 
more selfish appetites. The disposition of man, 
even in his most degraded state, to believe in su- 
pernatural agencies is so universal, and so mani- 
festly the result of his peculiar constitution, that 
we must regard it as having very much of the 
character of an instinct. As he advances in 
knowledge and has leisure for observation and 
reflection, the perception of the beauty, gran- 
deur, and harmony of the universe, of the evi- 
dence of intention and design, and of the adap- 
tation of means to ends in everything around 
him, and of the large amount of good with the 
small proportion of evil, which is manifested in 
the condition of all living creatures, leads him to 
the knowledge of an intelligent and beneficent 
Creator, to whom he may at any rate be respon- 
sible for the right use of the faculties with which 
he is endowed ; and thus the religious sentiment 



220 MIND AND MATTEK. 

becomes engrafted on the rude instinct of the 
savage. Thus, man as he exists under the best 
form of civilization, is made what he is by the 
operation of various causes. There are his origi- 
nal instincts^ without which he could no more 
have continued to exist than without the action 
of the heart. There are habits, which^begun in 
one, and continued in subsequent gererations, be- 
come confirmed in him, and bear a close resem- 
blance to instincts. These modify and correct 
each other, and they are all, in a greater or less 
degree, under the dominion of the intellect. 
Such is the general view which we must take 
of his condition ; but if we attempt to make a 
more exact analysis of it, we find the problem 
too complicated for a satisfactory solution ; the 
various influences to which he is subjected being 
so intermixed with each other, that it is impos- 
sible for us to determine in each particular in- 
stance how much of his sentiments and conduct 
is to be attributed to one of them, and how much 
to another. 

Crites. You have referred to the disposition 
of human beings to ^believe in supernatural 



MIND AND MATTER. 221 

agencies as partaking of the character of in- 
stincts. If yon are correct in so doing, it seems 
to me that yon may with equal reason include in 
the same category onr belief in the existence of 
a material world ; onr belief that what we 
remember as having happened, did really hap- 
pen ; in short, in all that some have intended to 
describe nnder the name of innate ideas, and 
that Buffier, and Reid after him, regarded as 
primary and fundamental truths ; the knowledge 
of which is forced upon us by our own con- 
stitution, and is independent of experience and 
reasoning. Now, although I do not admit the 
exactness of the catalogue of these primary 
truths, which has been furnished by the writers 
whom I have mentioned, and, indeed, do not 
doubt that they have included in it some kinds 
of knowledge which are derived from other 
sources, yet I do not dispute the correctness of 
their general views ; and, indeed, it is plain that 
it has been practically admitted by even the 
most sceptical of those philosophers who have 
written on the subject. But are we really justi- 

19* 



222 MIND AND MATTER. 

fied in regarding such kinds of belief as being of 
the nature of instinct ? 

Eubulus. They differ from instincts in one 
very essential circumstance. It has been shown 
that instincts are far from being constant and 
immutable; as under a change of circumstances 
certain instincts are lost, so are others generated. 
Even those which are of the greatest necessity, 
which seem to be the most constant, may, under 
certain circumstances, be found to be wanting in 
an individual in whom they had been fully 
developed previously. But it is otherwise with 
those articles of primary belief which are re- 
presented as the foundation of all our knowledge. 
However the lunatic may be deceived by his 
illusions, or however convincing the arguments 
of the metaphysician, neither the one nor the 
other can escape from the belief that there is an 
external world independent of himself, or that 
what he remembers to have happened did ac- 
tually occur. Taking these things into con- 
sideration, it seems not unreasonable to suppose 
that this class of convictions has some higher 



MIND AND MATTER. 223 

source than that which belongs to mere instincts, 
and that they are actually inherent in the mental 
principle itself, and independent of our physical 
organization. 



THE SIXTH DIALOGUE. 

Views of Human Nature. — The Science of Human Nature — its 
Objects and Applications — to be distinguished in its higher 
Department from the mere Practical Knowledge of Human 
Character which Men acquire for their own Purposes. — Different 
Opportunities of pursuing the Study of Human Nature presented 
to different Individuals. — The Observation of the Influence of 
the Body on the Mind, and of the Mind on the Body, a neces- 
sary Part of it. — The Science of Human Nature essential to the 
Science of Government. — The Pretensions of Phrenology. — Ana- 
tomical Objections to it. — Observations on the Evidence on which 
it rests. — Consideration of the Question as to the Eelation of the 
Size of the Brain to the Development of the Intellect. — General 
View of the Circumstances which tend to form or modify Men's 
Characters. — The Science of Human Nature not reducible to 
any Simple Rules. — Qualifications necessary for the Pursuit of 
it. — Self-knowledge. — Duties and Responsibilities. — Conclu- 
sion. 

The term which we had allotted for our visit was 
drawing to a close. On the day preceding that 
of our departure, after wandering for some time 
exposed to the rays of an August sun, we found 
ourselves enjoying the shelter of the beech wood, 
which I have already mentioned as being in the 
neighborhood of our friend's habitation. A tree 
which had been lately felled afforded us a seat. 



MIND AND MATTER. 225 

The cool shade was refreshing to us after the 
glare and heat of the sunshine in the open 
country ; and the stillness and silence which 
prevailed afforded us the opportunity of renew- 
ing our conversation on subjects connected with 
those which we had discussed previously. 

" It is probable," said Crites, " that such feel- 
ings might not be of long duration ; but I own 
that at the present moment the scene which is 
before me forms a delightful contrast to the 
bustle and activity of my e very-clay life ; and 
that it seems that I should be well contented to 
escape from the turmoil of the world, and the 
anxieties of a profession, and pass the rest of my 
days in some such retirement as this, — 

' The world forgetting, by the world forgot ; ' 

exchanging the study of the vices, caprices, and 
vagaries of mankind, for that of books and the 
contemplation of the beauties of the country." 
Eubulus. You judged rightly in saying that 
these feelings might not be of long duration. I 
can assure you from my own experience, that 
such a mode of life as you seem to contemplate 
would never satisfy you unless you were to com- 



226 MIND AND MATTER. 

bine with it some worthy pursuit appertaining to 
others as well as to yourself. You would, if thus 
living only for yourself, soon find the social in- 
stinct of which we were speaking yesterday, as 
irresistible as that of hunger ; so that you might 
as well pretend by a process of reasoning to 
abstain from eating if you were famished, as 
from seeking the society of your fellow-creatures, 
when you had been for some time deprived of it. 
Further, it seems to me that you are not like 
your usual self, and that you do not quite do 
justice to mankind, when you refer merely to 
their vices, caprices, and vagaries. It is true 
that of these there is much in their composition, 
which we might well wish to have been other- 
wise ; but let us not overlook the numerous 
examples which we meet with, of kind and 
generous actions, of sacrifices of self-interest 
made for the good of others in private, and 
sometimes even in public life. I have now lived 
long in the world, and have been mixed up with 
various classes of presons ; and I may truly say 
that, although I have met with evil more than 
enough in others, and am not, I hope, altogether 



MIJSTD AND MATTER. 227 

insensible of my own defects and failings, my 
individual experience has led me to entertain, on 
the whole, a better opinion of mankind than that 
which I should have had if I had studied the 
subject only in books. I speak, be it observed, 
of moral qualities. As to those of the intellect, I 
own that, some time since, when I had the op- 
portunity of passing an evening in the company 
of two lads belonging to the aborigines of 
Australia, I was lost in wonder, and could 
scarcely comprehend that from so rude a stock 
should have proceeded a race of beings so gifted 
as some of these with whom it has been my good 
fortune to be acquainted ; so full of knowledge ; 
penetrating into the mysteries of the material 
world; subjecting the physical forces to their 
will ; at the same time analysing the phenomena 
of the mind itself ; and ascending from thence to 
some knowledge, however limited, of the one 
Supreme Intellect which supports and regulates 
the universe. To us, situated as we are, with 
our duties and in our sphere of action, there is, I 
apprehend, no more worthy object of study than 
man himself; his instincts and higher faculties, 



228 MIND AND MATTER. 

his past history, his future destiny ; in short, the 
" science of human nature " taken in its most 
extended sense. And in this sense it is a most 
extensive science indeed, including as it does 
anatomy and physiology ; intellectual, moral, and 
political philosophy ; ethnology, and I know not 
how much besides. Even the most abstract 
sciences, though not directly, are indirectly 
related to it, as we value them only in proportion 
as they tend to gratify the curiosity, supply the 
necessities, or elevate the character of man. As 
we commonly understand it, however, the science 
of human nature has a more limited signification, 
implying a knowledge of the instincts, the pas- 
sions, the intellectual capacities, the active power 
of our species, and, above all, the motives by 
which the conduct of individuals is regulated. 

Ckites. Such as you have now described it, 
it may be said to be a science, which belongs as 
much to every individual among us as to the 
philosopher, dependent as we are on each other, 
and compelled as we are to learn something of 
the characters of those with whom we associate. 
The rich man's valet studies his master's temper 



MIND AND MATTER. 229 

and caprices, learns to anticipate his wants ; in 
those matters in which he is himself concerned, 
saves him the trouble of acting and even of 
thinking for himself; and thus at last acquires 
an influence over him, which is not the less real 
because his master is unconscious of it. The 
statesman, the lawyer, the merchant, the medical 
practitioner, the speculator, these and others, in 
their several ways, study the disposition of other 
men, as far as it is necessary for them to do so, 
with a view to their own advantage, or to enable 
them better to perform, the duties belonging to 
their respective callings. 

Eubultts. It seems, however, that we are 
scarcely justified in dignifying the practical 
knowledge of human nature which men gene- 
rally possess with the title of a science. For the 
most part they view it under only one of its 
numerous aspects ; the sight of each individual 
not extending beyond the little clique to which 
he himself belongs ; and there are none to whom 
this remark is more generally applicable than to 
those, who, independent of their own exertions, 
are born to the # inheritance of ease and affluence. 

20 



230 MIND AND MATTEK. 

Those who study human nature as a whole form 
an exception to the general rule. Some have 
not the talent of observation ; others have not 
the necessary leisure ; and of those who are not 
wanting in these respects the greater part have 
not the inclination to do so. 

Ceites. You may add that many have not 
the opportunity. Inquiries such as these can- 
not be carried on in a closet. They belong 
altogether to active life. Then be it observed 
that in some situations you come in contact only 
with a particular class, while in others the field 
of observation is more extensive. It seems to 
me that medical practitioners, if they know how 
to avail themselves of it, have in this respect an 
advantage over most other professions ; partly, 
because they have to deal with every order 
in society, from the high-born patrician and 
prosperous millionnaire, down to the poor man 
in the hospital, seeing them as they really are, 
under those circumstances of trial, which, more 
than anything else, level all artificial distinctions ; 
but more especially, because they are necessarily 
led to contemplate the mind, not simply in the 



MEND AND MATTER. 231 

abstract, as is the case with the mere meta- 
physician, but in connexion with the physical 
structure with which it is associated. 

Ekgates. Certainly the opinion which you 
have now expressed seems not to be without 
foundation. It is the business of medical prac 
titioners to study, not only the influence of the 
mind on the body, but also that of the body on 
the mind ; and, in so doing, they have the oppor- 
tunity of learning more than others to trace 
moral effects to physical causes. To them, hu- 
man nature, however it may be disguised, is but 
human nature still. "Where others complain of 
a fretful and peevish temper, it may be that they 
are led to make allowance for the difficulty of 
self-restraint, where there is a superabundance 
of lithic acid in the blood, or an organic disease 
of the viscera. In the catalepsy induced in a 
nervous girl by the so-called mesmeric passes, 
they see only one of the numerous phases of that 
multiform disease, hysteria ;. and in the mischie- 
vous, and sometimes even in the benevolent 
enthusiast, who, by his sincerity and earnestness, 
enlists in the cause which he undertakes the 



232 MIND AND MATTEK. 

sympathy of the multitude, their more expe- 
rienced observation will often detect the com- 
mencement of illusions and the germ of insanity. 
It would, however, be a very great mistake to 
regard this kind of knowledge as being altoge- 
ther peculiar to medical practitioners. In fact, 
the connexion between the mind and body is in 
many instances too palpable to be overlooked by 
any practical observer of mankind. For exam- 
ple, it is referred to by Lord Chesterfield, when 
he says that many a battle has been lost because 
the general had a fit of indigestion ; and you 
may recollect that I stated on a former occasion 
that Mr. Chadwick has clearly exposed the influ- 
ence of living in an unwholesome atmosphere as 
inducing the habit of gin-drinking with all the 
frightful moral consequences which follow in its 
train. Still it must be admitted that members 
of the medical profession have better opportuni- 
ties of obtaining knowledge of this kind than 
most other persons. Hence it is that in many 
things which, in these days of education, and in 
spite of the advancement of knowledge, others 
regard with wonder as the result of some un- 



MIND AND MATTEE. 233 

known and mysterious agency, they, with some 
rare exceptions, see nothing that is not to be ex- 
plained on well-known principles, or in any de- 
gree more remarkable than the exploits of M. 
Robin or other conjurors. 

EuBTTLUS. Some may pursue the inquiry with 
more or less of a philosophical spirit, and others 
merely as a matter of practical observation and 
experience ; but Crites has truly stated that some 
knowledge of human nature is necessary to all 
those who have any duties (however small) to 
perform in society, and the higher and more ar- 
duous these duties are, the greater is the amount 
of knowledge that is required. It forms the most 
essential part of the science of government, and 
to the want of it may be attributed many nation- 
al calamities, and the greater part of the mis- 
takes made by those to whom the affairs of na- 
tions are entrusted. The principal advantage 
possessed by an adventurer such as Cromwell, 
or the first Napoleon, is, that he cannot have 
risen by Iris own exertions through the various 
grades, which he has occupied in the course of 
his career, associating with others on equal terms, 

20* 



234 MIND AND MATTER. 

without acquiring an insight into men's minds 
and characters, which it would not have been 
possible for him to have acquired otherwise. 
The unhappy Louis XYI. and Marie Antoinette, 
surrounded as they had been by the etiquette, and 
misled by the adulation, of a Parisian court, 
received almost their first lessons in human 
nature from the brutal frenzy of a revolutionary 
mob. How different might have been the result, 
both for themselves and for Europe, if they had 
enjoyed a more familiar intercourse with their 
fellow-creatures ; or if at the head of a consti- 
tutional government, they had the opportunity 
of seeing the thoughts and feelings of the public 
and the spirit of the times reflected by an in- 
dependent press ! The great Duke, if he could 
have had an army such as he required, made to 
his hand, might, by his military skill, have been 
a successful general, and " the conqueror of a 
hundred battles," but it would have been still a 
problem how that army had been created, and 
how he surmounted the various difficulties which 
he had to encounter, if the publication of his de- 
spatches had not disclosed to us the great insight 



MIND AND MATTER. 235 

which he possessed into the moral and intel- 
lectual qualities of others. A statesman may 
form grand conceptions in his closet, but these 
will be of little avail if he knows not how to 
select the right men to carry his plans into 
execution ; or if, overlooking, or being ignorant 
of, the various characters of the different races 
of mankind, he applies to one of them a mode of 
government which is fitted only for another. 

Ceites. From the way in which you treat the 
subject, I suspect that you have disregarded, or 
at any rate are not a convert to, the doctrines of 
phrenology. Nevertheless, among my friends I 
am acquainted with some, and those too persons 
of much intelligence, who believe that these 
afford a sort of Royal road to a knowledge of 
men's dispositions and characters; and I well 
remember that, some years ago when Lord 
Glenelg occupied the situation of Colonial Se- 
cretary, a memorial, signed by many persons of 
repute, was addressed to him, seriously proposing 
that he should adopt the phrenological method 
of investigation, with a view to a classification of 
the convicts before they were transported to the 



236 MIND AND MATTER. 

colonies ; it being further proposed that an ex- 
perienced phrenologist should be taken into the 
service of the state, for the purpose of making 
the necessary examination of their heads. 

I do not mean to say that I am myself either 
a believer or an unbeliever in the system ; and I 
am led to mention it chiefly because Ergates, 
who has attended more than I have to questions 
of this kind, seemed, in one of our former 
conversations, to admit that there may be some 
foundation for these doctrines, when he expressed 
an opinion that the brain is not a single organ, 
but a congeries of organs, each having its peculiar 
function allotted to it. 

Ekgates. * Such, certainly, is the conclusion 
at which I have arrived, and which seems to 
derive confirmation, both from the anatomical 
structure of the brain, and from the observations 
of experimental physiologists. But you must 
not, therefore, suppose that I have the smallest 
faith in what is called phrenology, which is quite 
a different matter. The phrenological theory is, 
that of the various instincts, dispositions, and 
talents, each has a separate organ allotted to it ; 



MIND AND MATTER. 23 T 

that these organs, with only a single exception, 
are situated in the hemispheres of the cerebrum ; 
that in proportion as they are more or less 
developed, so is there a greater or less develop- 
ment of the faculties or qualities which they 
represent; that by the external figure of the 
head the relative size of these Various organs may 
be ascertained; and, lastly, that we have thus 
afforded to us the means of determining the 
characters of individuals, so as to form a pretty 
accurate notion of what their future conduct will 
be, independently of all * experience as to their 
conduct formerly- Now, there are two simple 
anatomical facts which the founders of this 
system have overlooked, or with which they 
were probably unacquainted, and which of 
themselves afford a sufficient contradiction of it. 
1st. They refer the mere animal propensi- 
ties chiefly to the posterior lobes, and the intel- 
lectual faculties to the anterior lobes of the 
cerebrum. But the fact is that the posterior 
lobes exist only in the human brain, and in that 
of some of the tribe of monkeys, and are abso- 
lutely wanting in quadrupeds. Of this there is 



238 MIND AND MATTER. 

no more doubt than there is of any other of the best 
established facts in anatomy ; so that, if phreno- 
logy be true, the most marked distinction between 
man, on the one hand, and a cat, or a horse, or a 
sheep, on the other, onght to be, that the former has 
the animal propensities developed to their fullest 
extent, and that these are deficient in the latter. 
2ndly. Birds have various propensities and 
faculties in common with us, and in the writings 
of phrenologists many of their illustrations are 
derived from this class of vertebral animals. 
But the structure of the bird's brain is essentially 
different, not only from that of the human brain, 
but from that of the brain of the mammalia 
generally. That I may make this plain, you 
must excuse me if I repeat what I said on the 
subject formerly. In the mammalia, the name 
of corpus striatum has been given to each of 
two organs of a small size compared with that 
of the entire brain, distinguished by a peculiar 
disposition of the gray, and the fibrous, or 
medullary substance, of which they are com- 
posed, and placed under the entire mass of the 
hemispheres of the cerebrum. In the bird's 



MIND AND MATTER. 239 

brain, what appears to a superficial observer 
to correspond to these hemispheres is found, on 
a more minute examination, to be apparently 
the corpora striata developed to an enormous 
size ; that which really corresponds to the cere- 
bral hemispheres being merely a thin layer ex- 
panded over their upper surface, and presenting 
no appearance of convolutions. It is plain, then, 
that there can be no phrenological organs in the 
bird's brain corresponding to those which are 
said to exist in the human brain, or in that of 
other mammalia. Yet birds are as pugnacious 
and destructive, as much attached to the locali- 
ties in which they reside, and as careful of their 
offspring, as any individual among us; and I 
suppose that no one will deny, that if there be 
special organs of tune or of imitation in man, 
such organs ought not to be wanting in the bull- 
finch and parrot. 

Eubulus. I do not pretend to have much 
knowledge of anatomy, but even without it — 
from the perusal of the writings of Spurzheim 
and pome other phrenologists — I had come very 
nearly to the same conclusion with that which 



240 - MIND AND MATTER. 

may be deduced from the facts mentioned by 
Ergates. It seems to me that the classification 
of faculties which these writers have made is 
altogether artificial, and that it is not at all 
reasonable to suppose that for each of these a 
special material organ must be required. If we 
admit the separate existence of the thirty-three 
faculties, or propensities, enumerated by Spurz- 
heim, we might with equal propriety admit the 
existence of many others, for which, however, the 
phrenological map of the head leaves no vacant 
space. 

Then, when I consider the evidence on which 
the determination of the seat of the several 
organs is founded, I can conceive nothing more 
fantastic or unsatisfactory, or more unlike that 
which is considered to be necessary to the for- 
mation of just conclusions in other sciences. 

Sometimes the seat of a particular organ is 
ascertained by a particular part of the head 
being warmer than the rest. It was thus that 
Dr. Gall was first led to detect the seat of the 
sexual passion in the cerebellum.* But is it 

* See Additional Note I. 



MIND AND MATTEK. 241 

really the fact that one part of the head is 
warmer than another if they are equally covered 
or uncovered ? Was it ever found to be so by a 
delicate thermometer? or is it at all probable 
that so much more heat should be generated in 
one portion of the brain than is generated in 
other parts, as to be perceptible through the 
bone and skin, and the hairy scalp ? 

The organ of philoprogenitiveness, by which 
parents are impelled to love their offspring, is said 
to be placed in the back part of the head, in the 
posterior lobes of the cerebrum, immediately 
above the cerebellum. ISTow observe in what 
manner this discovery was effected. Dr. Gall 
found a protuberance in this part of the heads of 
women, and for five years he meditated on the 
subject, but could advance no farther. At last 
he discovered a similar protuberance in the heads 
of monkeys. The question then arose, what is 
there in common between women and monkeys? 
At this point he obtained the assistance of a 
clergyman, who observed that monkeys are very 
fond of their offspring, and thus solved the difficul- 
ty : the conclusion at which he had arrived being 

21 



24:2 MIND AND MATTER. 

afterwards confirmed by the following circum- 
stance : — A woman in whom this part of the head 
was unusually prominent, being ill of a fever, 
and (we may suppose) delirious, believed her- 
self to be pregnant with five children. 

I shall trouble you by giving another example 
of the manner in which thsee researches were 
conducted by the two founders of the phreno- 
logical system. They are both of opinion that 
the organ of pride is situated in the back part of 
the head, and hence it is, as Dr. Spurzheim has 
observed, that " all the motions of pride take 
place in the direction upwards and backwards." 
But Dr. Gall further believes that it is the 
greater development of this organ which leads 
certain animals to prefer to live in elevated 
situations. Thus there is a proud rat which lives 
in hay-lofts, and in the attic story of a house ; 
and another, an humble rat, which is content to 
grovel in cellars and gutters. It is under the 
same influence that certain children and little 
men display a proud disposition by climbing on 
the backs of chairs, and that kings and emperors 
are seated on elevated thrones. 



MIND AND MATTER. 243 

Ceites. I do not undertake to defend such 
far-fetched illustrations as those to which you 
have referred ; and I am ready to admit that 
even those which are offered by Mr. George 
Combe (though his phrenological treatise displays 
very much more of a philosophical spirit than 
those of his predecessors) partake too much of 
the same loose and unscientific character. Being 
no anatomist, I cannot venture to make any obser- 
vations on the anatomical statement which has 
been made by Ergates. Still, setting aside all 
other considerations, if it be true that there are 
persons who, from the examination of the shape 
of a man's head, can form a pretty accurate 
notion as to his character, however the fact is to 
be accounted for, there must be something more 
than what is merely fanciful in phrenology. 
Facts are not to be rejected merely because the 
explanation offered of them proves to be er- 
roneous ; and I have not only heard of them 
from others, but have myself known instances 
of such shrewd observations on character made 
by phrenologists that I can scarcely believe them 
to have been purely accidental. 



244: MIND AND MATTER. 

V 

Ehbulus. I do not in the least doubt the 
accuracy of your statement ; and indeed I might 
refer to a part of my own experience in its 
favor. But I might also refer to still more 
numerous instances in which the phrenological 
examination of the head has proved to be a 
failure. You may perhaps regard me as being 
in some degree a prejudiced witness, and I will 
therefore merely refer you to an account, pub- 
lished some years ago, of the visit of Dr. Gall, 
the inventor of the science, to Sir Francis 
Chantrey's studio ; when he pronounced the 
head of Sir "Walter Scott (who had not the 
smallest turn for mathematics) to be that of a 
great mathematician; that of Troughton, the 
mathematical instrument maker, to be the head 
of a poet ; and at the same time discovered the 
indications of a superior intellect in another head, 
the living proprietor of which had certainly as 
little claim as any man could possibly have to be 
thus distinguished. 

But even if the errors of phrenology were less 
numerous than I believe them to be, that would 
not go far towards convincing me of the value 



MIND AND MATTER. 245 

of their art. It is not very difficult for a clever 
observer of human nature to form a notion of 
some part of a man's character in the course of 
a brief conversation with him ; and an enthusiast 
in phrenology may very honestly persuade him- 
self that he has obtained from the examination 
of his head that knowledge which he has really 
obtained from other sources. Then observe how 
comprehensive the faculties and propensities of 
the phrenological system are supposed to be. A 
large development of the organ of destructiveness 
in the head of Hare the murderer, explained 
how it was that he was led to murder sixteen 
human beings that he might sell their bodies.* 
But in the head of another person who never 
committed a murder it is sufficient to find that it 
exists in combination with a disposition to satire, 
or to deface mile-stones ; and in the beaver and 
squirrel, it explains how it is that these animals 
are impelled to cut and tear in pieces the bark, 
leaves, and branches of trees, for the innocent 
purpose of constructing their cabins and nests. 

* A System of Phrenology, by George Combe, 5th edition, 
vol. i. p. 262, &c. 

21* 



246 MIND AND MATTER. 

So the large size of the organ of acquisitiveness 
not only leads one person to be a thief and 
another to hoard, but it also explains the habits 
of the spendthrift (who does not hoard at all) ; 
and it impels storks and swallows to return after 
their migrations to establish themselves, each 
succeeding year in the same locality. Following 
these examples, I do not see that a phrenologist 
can be much at a loss in finding a character for 
any individual suited to the peculiar confi- 
guration of his head. But observe further, if 
a difficulty were to occur, how easily it may be 
explained away by an ingenious phrenologist. 
If ever there was a race of thoroughly re- 
morseless murderers in the world, such were the 
Thugs of India. Generation after generation 
they were born and bred to murder. They 
looked to murder as the source not only of profit 
but of honor. Dr. Spry sent the skulls of seven 
of these demons, who had been hanged at 
Saugor, to some phrenological friends in Scot- 
land. To their surprise, destructiveness was not 
a predominant organ in any one of them. But 
the anomaly was soon explained. The Thugs, it 



MIND AND MATTEE. 247 

was said, had no abstract love of murder, but 
murdered for the sake of robbery.* It would 
not be easy to show that there was any difference 
between the Thugs and Hare, or Burke, or 
Bishop, in this respect. 

Eegates. After what I have already said, 
you will scarcely suspect me of being a convert 
to the doctrines of phrenology. We must not, 
however, lose sight of the facts, that idiots for 
the most part have small heads, and that we are 
generally agreed in considering a large head and 
a capacious forehead as indicative of superior 
intellectual endowments. In like manner as the 
ancient sculptors gave the figures of some of the 
Heathen Gods the appearance of youth, by 
shortening the jaws so that they could not be 
supposed to contain the entire number of teeth 
belonging to the adult, so they expressed the 
Divine Intelligence of others by increasing the 
dimensions of the forehead. But even to this 
rule there are exceptions. Some very stupid 
persons, within my own knowledge, have had 
very large heads. On the other hand, if we 
* India, Pictorial and Historical, London, 1854, p. 356. 



248 MIND AND MATTER. 

may trust to the authority of the bust of Newton 
in the apartment of the Royal Society, the head 
of that mighty genius was below the average 
size ; and Moore describes the head of Byron as 
having been unusually small, with a narrow 
forehead ; the fact being confirmed by an anec- 
dote related by Colonel Napier, of a party of 
fourteen persons having tried to put on his hat, 
and having found that it was too small to fit any 
one of them. On a former occasion I adverted 
to an hypothesis by which these anomalies may 
be explained. The nervous force is supposed to 
be generated in^ the gray or vesicular substance, 
of which the greater part is expanded on the 
surface of the cerebral hemispheres, the extent 
of that surface depending not so much on the 
bulk of the entire brain as on the number and 
depth of the convolutions. Without, however, 
having recourse to this explanation, it is easy to 
suppose that a more or less refined organization 
may make all the difference, so that the smaller 
brain of one individual may be a more perfect 
instrument for the mind to use than the larger 
one of another. 



MIND AND MATTER. 249 

Eubttlus. Men's characters are indeed com- 
pounded of so many elements, and are influenced 
by so great a variety of circumstances, that it is 
difficult to understand how they can be deter- 
mined by any such simple rules as those laid 
down by the phrenologists. 

First, there are those original and necessary 
instincts, without which the human race could 
not exist at all, but which are nevertheless, in 
like manner as the higher or intellectual facul- 
ties, more complete and of greater intensity in 
some individuals than they are in others. Then 
there are those habits which are gradually 
acquired during several successive generations, 
by which chiefly the different races of mankind 
are distinguished from each other ; which cause 
one nation to be peaceful and another warlike ; 
which engender low-mindedness and cunning 
in those who have had an uncertain tenure of 
life, or liberty, or property, under an arbitrary 
and oppressive government; and give rise to 
liberal sentiments, and an open and manly 
bearing in those who have had the advantage 
of belonging to a free and well regulated com- 



250 MIND AND MATTER. 

munity. To these we may add those other 
habits and modes of thinking which are the 
result of early discipline and training in indi- 
vidual cases ; which dispose him who has been 
brought up among thieves to become a thief; 
which cause the spoiled child, whatever his 
original disposition may have been, to grow up 
into the selfish man ; which explain how it is 
that of two persons with the same amount of 
natural talent, one remains from the beginning 
to the end of his life absorbed in frivolous pur- 
suits, and dies unregretted, or perhaps despised ; 
while the other is distinguished for his genius 
and superior intellectual attainments, transmit- 
ting his fame to posterity as that of a benefactor 
of the human race. If we pursue the inquiry 
further, we find that in addition to moral agen- 
cies such as I have enumerated, there are va- 
rious physical agencies which co-operate with 
them in forming individual characters. One 
man is in that state of bodily health, that even 
in spite of adverse circumstances he is always 
cheerful and contented, ready to sympathize 
with others, and obtaining their sympathy in 



MIND AND MATTER. 251 

return. Another oppressed by chronic dyspepsia, 
or visceral disease, or having his nervous ener- 
gies exhausted by excessive labor, is in that 
condition which causes every impression made 
on him to be attended with more or less of 
an uneasy feeling ; and hence he is fretful and 
peevish, doubtful as to himself, suspicious of 
others ; so that it is only under the influence 
of a high moral principle, and by a constant 
effort of self-control, that he can avoid being 
ungracious in his general behavior, and in his 
dealings with mankind, bring himself up to the 
level of his more fortunate competitor. Nor are 
physical agencies of another kind less influential 
in other ways. It cannot be supposed that the 
young gentleman of fashion, whom I remember 
to have seen described in one of the police 
reports as never being without a cigar in his 
mouth, except when he was at his meals, or 
when he was asleep, had- any other than a mud- 
dled intellect ; and the alcohol circulating in the 
vessels of the habitual drunkard must have even 
a more injurious influence than the poison of 
tobacco. We may carry our inquiries further 



252 MIND AND MATTER. 

still, and in doing so we find the problem to 
become still more complicated. How often does 
it happen that the character alters as years 
advance ! The young man who enters on his 
career in the possession of what are called great 
worldly advantages, full of hope, flattered by 
those around him, and expecting of life more 
than life can bestow, incurs a great risk of 
becoming in the end a disappointed misanthrope. 
So the spendthrift of one period may be the 
miser of another; and he, whose early efforts 
obtain for him the reputation of superior intel- 
ligence, not unfrequently ends where he began, 
having allowed his talents to run to waste, and 
never accomplished anything afterwards by 
which hemight be distinguished from the herd 
of ordinary mortals. 

Eegatbs. You may include in the same cate- 
gory the changes which take place in advanced 
life, and which are undoubtedly to be attributed 
to an altered condition of the brain ; beginning 
with the imperfect recollection of late events, 
and ending with that more complete failure of 
the memory, which seems to be the true, as it is 



MUSTD AND MATTER. 253 

the all-sufficient, explanation of the fatuity oc 
casionally met with in extreme old age. 

Eubultjs. There can be no question as to the 
occurrence of the changes which you mentioned. 
But it is worthy of notice that, while in old age 
the recent impressions on the memory are eva- 
nescent, it is quite otherwise as to those which 
were made formerly ; and hence it is that the 
old man, whose mind wanders when he speaks 
of what has happened to-day or yesterday, may 
be quite clear and coherent when he goes back 
to the scenes of his early life ; and that it is on 
these especially that he loves to dwell during 
the day, while they form almost the entire sub- 
ject of his dreams at night. At the same time 
my own observations lead me to believe that the 
failure of the mind in old age is often more appa- 
rent than real. The old man is not stimulated by 
ambition, as when he felt that he might have 
many years of life before him. He has probably 
withdrawn from his former pursuits, and has 
substituted no others for them ; and we know 
that the mind as well as the body requires 
constant exercise to maintain it in a healthy 

22 



254 MIND AND MATTER. 

state. "Where it is still occupied we frequently 
find it to survive the decay of the body, retaining 
its energy and vigor even to the last. 

The further we extend our inquiries in this 
direction, the more difficult it seems to under- 
stand how any simple rules can be laid down 
for explaining and determining men's characters. 
It has been reported of a celebrated prime 
minister of the last century, that he held every 
man to have his price. The anecdote may or 
may not be true ; But if it be so, the answer to 
such an ungracious doctrine is sufficiently ob- 
vious. He drew his conclusions from a too 
limited experience, and did not bear in mind 
that those who had not their price were just the 
persons with whom it was least, likely that he 
should come in contact. . Adam Smith has been, 
to a considerable extent, successful in referring 
to that involuntary sympathy (or instinct) which 
causes us to participate in what is felt, or what 
we suppose to be felt, by others, as the foun- 
dation of our moral sentiments. But this simple 
and beautiful theory does not explain the whole. 
It overlooks the disturbing influences arising out 



MIND AND MATTER. 255 

of peculiarities of the physical, organization : and 
it has not sufficient reference to the intellectual 
faculties, which in all the concerns of life are so 
mixed up with the moral sentiments, each in- 
fluencing the other, that to study either of them 
separately, is as useless as it would be to study 
geology without reference to chemistry and mi- 
neralogy ; or the phenomena of the living body 
disregarding the laws which operate on inorgan- 
ic matter. "What I have ventured to call "the 
science of human nature" is a department of 
knowledge, in which I will not say that we re- 
cognize no leading principles, but in which we 
recognize none that will supersede the necessity 
of minute observation, and an extended indi- 
vidual experience. For all practical purposes 
the study of it must be conducted very much in 
detail, and no man can make much progress in 
it whose views are limited to one variety of the 
human species, or to one class in society ; or 
whose situation is such that he is merely a looker 
on, and not himself an actor in the busy drama 
of life. 

Crites. You may add that whoever would 



256 MIND AND MATTER. 

understand the minds of others, and exercise an 
useful influence over them, must first understand 
himself. He who forms a wrong estimate of his 
own capabilities, of his own prejudices, and of 
the weak points of his own character, measures 
the characters of others by an erroneous standard. 
Hot only is he in constant danger of undertaking 
that which he is not qualified, and of neglecting 
that which he is qualified, to perform, but he is 
at the mercy of others, who although they may 
very probably be inferior to himself in some of 
the nobler qualities, obtain a dominion over him 
by studying his defects, and making them sub- 
servient to their private purposes. 

Eubitlus. "Whatever they may have been 
otherwise, the priests of the Delphic Oracle were 
certainly no impostors when they displayed that 
simple but significant inscription " rv»0< a-eavrov " 
over the portico of the temple of the heathen god. 
If self-knowledge be important as the first step 
towards a knowledge of the characters of others, 
on other grounds it is more important still. 
Though we may admit, with Ergates, that the 
mental principle must be of the same essence, 



MIND AND MATTER. 257 

under whatever form it exists, still there can be 
no question as to the vast superiority of the mind 
of mamto that of all the created beings by whom 
he is surrounded. But in what does that su- 
periority consist \ Other animals, and more 
especially the gregarious, are not without an 
ample share of the moral sentiments. We see 
them displayed in the dog, who rejoices in being 
your companion, and who flies to your assistance 
if you are attacked ; in the attachment of the 
elephant to his keeper who treats him kindly, and 
in his resentment of injuries ; in the roebuck, 
who pines and dies if separated from his mate ; 
and even in the cat, who, peaceful at other times, 
turns round on you in anger if you interfere 
with her kitten. It is not as to these, but as to 
his intellectual faculties, that there is so vast a 
difference between man and other animals, that 
none can be said even to approach him in this 
respect. But this distinction is not without its 
price. It imposes on him duties of a higher 
order, and greater responsibilities. He is re- 
quired not to yield to the impulse of the moment, 
but to look to the more remote consequences of 

22* 



258 MIND AND MATTER. 

what he says and does ; and to keep not only 
his instincts and passions, but even his thoughts, 
in subjection to his will. Nor can this be rightly 
accomplished by any one who does not regard 
his own powers, his own disposition, and his 
peculiar moral temperament, influenced as it is 
by his physical condition and his mode of life, as 
a fit object of study, even more than anything 
external to himself. This brings us to other 
inquiries of the highest interest, involving as 
they do so much of what is of the greatest im- 
portance to ourselves and others ; inquiries which 
have not been neglected by heathen philosophers, 
but which assume a more exalted character, 
when pursued by those who, under the influence 
of a purer faith, feel that they are answerable to 
one almighty power for the right use of the 
faculties with which they are endowed. But on 
these we have no leisure to enter at present. 
"Whatever may be the value of our discussions, 
from the arrangements which you, my friends, 
have made, we must consider them as closed. 

" Qtice cum essent dicta, Jmem fecimus et 
ambulandi et disputandi." 



ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



Note A. Page 30. 

The following eloquent passage, extracted from Dr. Newman's 
lectures, will be read with interest in connection with the obser- 
vations of Sir Walter Scott and Sir Humphry Davy, referred to 
in the text : — 

Self-educated persons " are likely to have more thought, more 
mind, more philosophy, than those earnest but ill-used persons, 
who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects 
against an examination ; who have too much on their hands to 
indulge themselves in thinking or investigation ; who devour 
premiss and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness ; 
who hold science on faith, and commit demonstrations to me- 
mory, and who too often, as might be expected, when their 
period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in 
disgust, having gained nothing by their anxious labors except, 
perhaps, the habit of application. 

" Yet such is the bitter specimen of the fruit of that ambitious 
system, which has of late years been making way among us. 
But its result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of 
students, is less satisfactory still. They leave their place of edu- 
cation simply dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of sub- 
jects, which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as 



260 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 

not even to know their own shallowness. How much better is 
it for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be 
found, to eschew the college and the university altogether, than 
to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious ! 
How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the 
mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at ran- 
dom, taking down books as he meets with them, and pursuing 
the trains of thoughts which his mother wit suggests ! How 
much healthier to wander in the fields, and there with the exiled 
prince to find 'tongues in the trees, books in the running 
brooks.' How much more genuine an education is that of the 
poor boy in the poem, — a poem, whether in conception or ex- 
ecution, one of the most touching in our language, — who, not in 
the wide world, but ranging day by day round his widowed 
mother's home, a dexterous gleaner in a narrow field, and with 
only such slender outfit 

" ' As the village school and books a few supplied,' 

" contrived, from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, 
and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shep- 
herd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and 
the screaming gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for him- 
self a philosophy and poetry of his own." 



Note B. Page 38. 

The question referred to in the text has been well stated by an 
accomplished friend of the author. 

" The advocate for an immaterial principle is often unjust to 
his argument, in his assiduity to rid himself of those facts which 
attest the close and constant action of matter upon mind. They 
are too palpable, not only in matters of sense, but also as regards 
the purely mental processes, to admit of any evasion. His true 
doctrine lies beyond this ; in asserting a principle submitted 
indeed to these influences, but different from them ; capable of 
independent changes and actions within itself; and, above all, 
capable of self-regulation in those functions of thought and feel- 
ing to which external agents minister in the various processes 
of life. The ministering agents may become disturbing ones, 
and such they frequently are to a singular extent. But in this 
we have no proof of identity. "Whatever of reason we can apply 
to an argument insuperable by human reason is against it ; and 
the record of such instances is wholly comprised within that one 
great relation, which pervades every part of our present being ; 
but the intimate nature of which is a sealed book to human 
research." — Medical Notes and Reflections, by Sir Henry Hol- 
land, Bart., M.D. 2d edit. p. 461. 

Those who are curious in inquiries of this nature will do well 
to refer to another work by the same author, " Chapters on Men- 
tal Physiology" especially to the chapters which relate to sleep, 
dreams, and insanity. 



Note C. Page TO. 

If a comparison of the effects produced by various stimulant 
and narcotic agents on the nervous system be interesting to the 
physiologist, it ought not to be less so to the moral philosopher 
and the statesman. 

At one period opium was much in request among the inferior 
classes of the metropolis, and there were chemists who disposed 
of many boxes of opium pills on a Saturday night. Then gin 
became cheap ; the gin-palace arose, and opium was neglected. 
This was greatly to the advantage of the revenue. But was it 
of advantage to society ? The effect of opium when taken into 
the stomach is not to stimulate, but to soothe the nervous sys- 
tem. It may be otherwise in some instances, but these are rare 
exceptions to the general rule. The opium-taker is in a passive 
state, satisfied with his own dreamy condition while under the 
influence of the drug. He is useless, but not mischievous. It 
is quite otherwise with alcoholic liquors. "When Bishop and his 
partner murdered the Italian boy, in order that they might sell 
his body, it appeared in evidence that they prepared themselves 
for the task by a plentiful libation of gin. The same course is 
pursued by housebreakers, and others who engage in desperate 
criminal undertakings. It is worthy of notice, also, that opium 
is physically much less deleterious to the individual than gin or 
brandy. Many opium-takers live to a great age, while dram- 
drinking induces disease of the liver, with its attendant bodily 
suffering, ill-temper, wretchedness, and premature death. 



NOTE c. 263 

The effect of malt-liquor, like that of gin, depends on the alco- 
hol which it contains, modified, however, in some degree by the 
sedative properties of the hop. But it is much less dangerous. 
According to Mr. Brande's tables, the proportion of alcohol in. 
gin is as much as 50 per cent., while in London porter it is not 
much more than 4 per cent. The porter-drinker, therefore, must 
drink 6£ pints of porter to obtain gradually the effect which the 
gin-drinker obtains at once from half a pint (8 ounces) of gin. 
Gin-drinking, moreover, is in some other respects better suited 
to the ill-disposed part of the population. It does not distend 
the stomach as is the case with the more diluted liquor when 
taken in large quantity; and therefore does not at the time 
interfere so much with active exertion. It is also more econo- 
mical. Eight ounces of the strongest gin (at the present price) 
costing about one sixth part less than their equivalent in porter. 

Tobacco, as it is commonly used, is certainly less mischievous 
both as to the individual, and as to society at large, than alcohol. 
At the same time (independently of the unwholesome influence 
which it has on the digestive organs) there is sufficient evidence 
that an excessive indulgence in the use of it produces ultimately 
a very ill effect on the nervous system. A distinction, however, 
must be made between smoking tobacco and the employment of 
it in other ways. It has been shown that by the application of 
heat above the temperature of boiling water, a new compound 
(the empyreumatic oil) is generated, which is not only a very 
much more active poison, but one which operates especially on the 
brain in a manner entirely different from the unprepared tobacco.* 

* See " Experiments and Observations on the different Modes in which 
Death is produced by certain "Vegetable Poisons," by B. C. Brodie, F.R.8. ; 
Phil. Transactions, 1811. 



Note D. Page 104. 

Although Dr. Mayo's "Croonian Lectures on Medical Testi- 
mony and Evidence in Cases of Lunacy " have been on one point 
referred to in the text, -they were not published until a consider- 
able time after these papers were ready for the press. 

Dr. Mayo has carefully analyzed the facts which bear on the 
question as to what has been called " moral insanity." He has 
shown that many of the cases described as belonging to this 
category were neither more nor less than examples of insanity, 
according to the strict and ordinary interpretation of that term. 
He has shown that others, in which the plea of " moral insanity" 
was set up as an excuse for crime, deserved no better appellation 
than that of " brutal recklessness ;" and that to acquit criminals 
of this class on the ground of irresponsibility, is only to induce 
others to follow in the same course, who might otherwise be 
restrained by a wholesome fear of punishment. 

Even with regard to those who are actually insane, he is of 
opinion that there is a defect " in the nature of our criminal 
code, which recognizes no punishment for offences committed by 
the insane ; and forces the courts either to visit them with the 
same penal inflictions as would apply to the same acts commit- 
ted by the sane, their derangements being ignored, or to let 
them pass unpunished, however partially responsible they may 
appear." 

Dr. Mayo has treated the whole subject, including that of 
mere unsoundness of mind, in the most able and lucid manner; 



NOTE D. 265 

and his observations on it are the more valuable, and will have 
the greater weight, as they come from one who combines just 
theoretical views with the practical knowledge of an experienced 
physician. 



23 



Note E. Page 134. 

Even setting aside the cases of dying persons, or of those who 
labor under serious disease, there is sufficient evidence that in 
many instances those who appear to be insensible to external 
impressions are not so in reality ; the apparent insensibility be- 
ing the result of a strong dislike, or disinclination, to make the 
effort necessary for giving expression to what they feel, and of 
nothing more. 

Esquirol describes the case of a young man who, after some 
disappointment in life, fell into what seemed to be a state of 
idiotcy. His eyes were fixed: his physiognomy was without 
expression. It was necessary to dress and undress him, and to 
put him in bed. He never ate, except when food was put into 
his mouth. He never walked, except when compelled to do so. 
He recovered after the use of some remedies, and the appearance 
of an eruption on his skin. After his recovery he confessed that 
he had never been insensible at aU, but that an internal voice 
was always repeating to him, " Ne bouge pas ! Ne iouge pas /" 
and that fear alone had rendered him immovable.* 

In other instances, the apparent insensibility is the result of 
mere imposture. 

A young woman (a hospital patient), under the care of Esqui- 
rol, seemed to be in a state of profound stupor. She lay motion- 
less in her bed, never speaking, even when pinched or pricked 
with a sharp instrument. A seton was made in her neck, and 

* Esquirol, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 287. 



NOTE E. 267 

blisters were applied in various parts of her body, but she gave 
no signs of feeling, or even of knowing what was done. One 
day, however, when Esquirol paid her his usual visit, she had 
left her bed of her own accord, and from that time nothing could 
persuade her to remain in the dormitory at the time when he 
was expected. 

"When she left the hospital she confessed that her insensibility 
had been feigned. She said that one of the students had made 
the experiment of pinching her ; that she had felt no objection 
to this being done by Esquirol himself, but that she did not 
choose to submit to what she conceived to be a piece of imperti- 
nence on the part of the student,- and therefore had determined 
to be always out of the way when the medical attendants were 
to visit her.* 

A case recorded in the Philosophical Transactions, very forci- 
bly illustrates the extent to which such an imposture may be 
carried. 

A young man, the son of a farmer in the neighborhood of 
Bath, fell into what was supposed to be a state of profound 
sleep, which lasted during seventeen weeks. During this time 
he was visited by a great number of persons, and various at- 
tempts were made to awaken him, but without success. He 
was cupped ; spirit of ammonia was held to his nostrils, and 
even poured into them so as to occasion inflammation and blis- 
ters, but all in vain. He slept on as before, and hence Dr. Oli- 
ver, who relates the case, was satisfied that "he was really 
asleep, and no sullen counterfeit, as some persons thought him." 

The correctness of Dr. Oliver's opinion may, however, well be 

* Esquirol, op. oit. vol. ii. 



V 



268 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 

questioned : as every night his mother placed on a stool by his 
bed some bread and cheese and beer, which always had disap- 
peared in the morning ; and as certain functions, the necessary 
consequence of eating and drinking, were regularly and decently 
performed.* 

Impostures of this kind will appear in no degree extraordinary 
to those who are accustomed to witness surgical operations, not 
performed under the influence of ansesthetic agents, and who 
know how common it is for patients to undergo even those of 
the most painful kind without uttering a complaint, or in any 
way expressing what they feel. 

* Philosophical Transactions, 1706, vol. xxiv. 



Note F. Page 186. 



There probably is in the whole range of science no problem the 
solution of which is more difficult than that of the relation of the 
mental faculties to particular parts of the nervous system. Some 
very general propositions may be considered as established on 
not very insufficient data, and it is not impossible that by the 
method pointed out in page 182, — namely, a careful study of the 
habits and faculties of inferior animals, pursued simultaneously 
with the examination of the differences of structure of the 
brain, — some further insight may ultimately be obtained into 
this mysterious subject. It is not easy to understand in what 
other way this object can be obtained. The inquiry, however, 
is one which may well excite our curiosity, and it is no matter 
of wonder that it should have attracted the attention of physio- 
logists. Those who wish to be more particularly acquainted 
with the views entertained by the most eminent modern phy- 
siologists may refer to Dr. Carpenter's "Principles of Human 
Physiology." Allusion has been made in a former part of this 
volume to the crude speculations of Dr. Hooke. The subject 
has been treated of in a more elaborate manner by a contempo- 
rary of Hooke, being the most distinguished anatomist and phy- 
siologist of the 17th century; and the following abridged ac- 
count of the conclusions at which he had arrived is offered to 
the reader, as it may be interesting to compare them with the 
opinions which are held at the present day. It is plain that the 

23* 



270 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 

majority of these conclusions do not rest on any very sure foun- 
dation; but " valeant quantum valent." 

According to Willis,* the nervous force (termed by him the 
animal spirits) is generated wholly in the gray or vesicular snb- 
stance of the brain, which, being a kind of secreting organ, is, 
therefore, possessed of a higher degree of vascularity than the 
medullary. The convolutions of the cerebrum and the folds of 
the cerebellum are intended to offer a more extended surface for 
the gray substance, and thus to enable it to furnish a more abun- 
dant supply of the nervous force than could have been furnished 
otherwise. The medullary substance (in which Willis had de- 
tected the existence of a fibrous structure, having traced the 
fibres from the medidla oblongata through the corpora striata and 
thalami), is intended for the transmission, exercise, and dispens- 
ing of the nervous force, but not for its production. 

By means of the medullary substance, connected as it is with 
the gray .substance of the convolutions, the nervous force is 
transmitted to the corpus callosum, and this last-mentioned organ 
is that which is principally connected with the intellectual facul- 
ties ; at the same time that, by combining the two hemispheres 
of the cerebrum, it enables them to co-operate with each other. 
The forms of sensible objects are preserved in the convolutions, 
" tanquam in diversis cellulis et apothecis ;" from which we must 
conclude that Willis regarded these as especially connected with 
the memory. The corpora striata are the channel of communica- 

* See his treatises De Anatome Cerebri and Be Anima Brutorum; the 
latter, however, is chiefly occupied with metaphysical speculations, many 
of which relate to matters which may well be regarded as beyond the 
limits of human knowledge. 



NOTE F. 271 

tion between the medulla oblongata, the nerves, and the cerebral 
hemispheres. They are themselves the seat of simple sensation. 
But the impressions of the senses being transmitted from thence 
to the corpus caltosum, and from the latter to the convolutions, 
become there subservient to the memory and imagination, and 
excite in the mind the feeling of desire, and acts of volition. 
The same impressions, in some instances, instead of being trans- 
mitted to the cerebrum, are, by a reflex operation, propagated in 
the other direction, — that is, to the nerves, producing in them 
effects of which the mind takes no cognizance, and motions of 
which we are therefore unconscious. 

The cerebellum belongs more especially to what Bichat has 
called " organic life," and furnishes the nervous force required 
for the action of the heart, respiration, digestion, and the other 
mere corporeal functions. It is also the part principally con- 
nected with the animal instincts (instincius mere naturales), and 
the emotions ; but not exclusively so, as the other bodies, situ- 
ated in the base of the brain, belong to the instincts and emo- 
tions also. With regard to the instincts, "Willis supposes the 
cerebellum to be associated with the cerebrum, inasmuch as the 
desires belonging to them can produce no effect until their influ- 
ence is communicated to it, exciting in the mind, through its 
intervention, the act of volition. As regards the emotions also, 
the cerebellum is associated with the cerebrum, but in this case 
the movement is in the opposite direction, beginning in the cere- 
brum, and from thence extending to the cerebellum, so as to 
affect the heart, and other organs which are under its immediate 
control. 



Note G-. Page 188. 

The following case may be adduced in confirmation of the evi- 
dence which anatomy affords as to the gray matter of the ner- 
vous system being the part in which the nervous force is gene- 
rated: — A young woman, of hysterical constitution, died after 
having been for some days in a state of great mental excitement, 
attended with convulsive movements of the limbs, resembling 
those of aggravated chorea, consequent on her having been ter- 
rified by a man who insulted her in a most outrageous manner. 
On examination of the parts after death, the determination of 
blood to the gray matter on the surface of the convolutions was 
found to have been such as to make it everywhere of a scarlet 
color. 

The circumstance of the convolutions of the cerebrum being 
more numerous and complicated, thug presenting a larger sur- 
face for the expansion of the gray matter in man than in any 
other animal, seems to justify the opinion enunciated by Des 
Moulins, and adopted by Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Todd, Mr. Bowman, 
and other eminent physiologists, that this peculiar structure is 
connected with the greater extent of the intellectual faculties in 
the human race. The observations of Leuret, however, founded 
on a comparison of the brain in a large number of animals, tends 
to create some doubt as to the accuracy of this conclusion.* For 
example, the convolutions of the brain in the sheep are nume- 

* Anatomie comparee du Systdmo Nerveux, chap. 6me. 



NOTE G. 273 

rous and well marked, while in the brain of the beaver and of 
the rat there are almost none at all. But who can doubt that 
the intelligence of the two last-mentioned animals is much 
greater than that of the former ? Frederic Cuvier, indeed, find- 
ing that the beaver, living without companions in the Jardin des 
Plantes, when supplied with wood, began to build a hut in the 
same way as when living in association, was led to believe that 
he was of a very low degree of intelligence, and almost wholly 
under the dominion of instinct.* But, on the other hand, it is 
affirmed by Buffon, that a solitary beaver, in a well-inhabited 
country, does not build a hut at all, but seeks for his residence 
some natural excavation on the bank of a river ;f and Cart- 
wright, describing the habits of beavers, as observed by him in 
Labrador, adduces various instances of their adapting their pro- 
ceedings to the new and peculiar circumstances in which they 
are placed, in a way which can be attributed only to intelligence. 
Monsieur Dareste suggests that the extent of the convolutions 
bears a relation, not to the intelligence, but to the size of the 
animal,:): a view of the subject corresponding to that taken by 
Haller,§ and supported by many facts. But here also there are 
exceptions sufficient to prevent the adoption of the general rule. 
For instance, the kangaroo is a much larger animal than an 
average dog, but the convolutions of the brain in the former of 
these animals are very much less extensive than they are in the 
latter. 

* Annales d'Histoire Naturelle, tome ix. pp. 291-318. 
t Ibid, tome i p. 266. 

X Comptes rendus, Janvier, 1862, Annales d'Histoire Natnrelle, 8me 
serio, tome xviii. 
§ Elements Physiologies, lib. i. n. 7. 



Note H. Page 206. 



It is but just to the accomplished and learned author of the 
"Philosophy of Language," that the entire passage, from which 
an extract has been given in the text, should be presented to 
the reader. 

" Speech, the language of articulate sounds, is the most won- 
derful, the most delightful, of the arts which adorn and elevate 
our being. It is also the most perfect. It enables us, as it 
were, to express things beyond the reach of expression ; the 
infinite range of existence ; the exquisite fineness of emotion ; 
the intricate subtleties of thought. Of such effect are these sha- 
dows of the soul ; these living sounds which we call words ! 
Compared with them how poor are all other monuments of hu- 
man power, or perseverance, or skill, or genius ! They render 
the mere clown an artist ; nations immortal ; orators, poets, phi- 
losophers divine!" 

In the work here referred to, a just and very important dis- 
tinction is made between mere language, and articulate lan- 
guage, or speech ; the former being used as a generic term, ap- 
plicable to all the different methods by which animals communi- 
cate their wants and feelings to each other ; speech being used 
as a specific term, representing that kind of language which con- 
sists of the voice produced by the larynx, and then modified by 
articulation, that is, by the action of the muscles of the throat 
and mouth. 

According to this definition, we cannot suppose any race of 



NOTE H. 275 

animals, with the exception of some of those of the very lowest 
orders (the oyster for example), to be absolutely and entirely 
without the use of language. That the gregarious birds possess 
it to a very considerable extent must be plain to any one who has 
watched rooks in their rookery, or observed swallows collecting 
gradually on a parapet wall, and chattering with each other before 
they take then flight all at once for their winter habitations. 

At the same time it would seem that the language of birds, 
and the gregarious mammalia, is limited to varieties of voice in 
the larynx ; and that on man alone has been conferred the ines- 
timable boon of articulate language or speech. Such slight mo- 
difications of the voice in the passages of the mouth and nostrils, 
as occur in the barking of a dog, or the bleating of a sheep, or 
the unmeaning imitation of certain words by parrots and star- 
lings, cannot properly be regarded as exceptions to this general 
rule. The different sounds, and combinations of sounds, which 
may be produced in the larynx, numerous as they may be, 
would be quite insufficient for the complicated relations of hu- 
man society, and quite inadequate to express the sentiments, 
and desires, and thoughts of the individuals of whom it is com- 
posed. Speech, with all its endless varieties of sound, and into- 
nation, and accent, could alone meet these requirements. If a 
higher order of intellect be necessary for speech, the latter is not 
less necessary for the full development of the intellect. "Without 
it, human society might have been littfe better than that of 
rooks or beavers , with it, it is impossible to say how much fur- 
ther progress may not yet be made in knowledge and civiliza- 
tion ; or, in after ages, what still higher destiny may be reserved 
for man, even here on earth. 



276 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 

As there is no instance of any, even the smallest and most de- 
graded, community of human beings, who are without it, so we 
cannot do otherwise than regard the faculty of speech as having 
its origin in instinct. This, however, like the other instincts 
which appertain to man's social condition, differs materially 
from those which appertain merely to the individual. The latter 
class of instincts are simple, and in themselves complete. The 
former are as nothing until they have been called forth by inter- 
course with others, and even then are of little avail without the 
help of education and experience. The savage of Aveyron, 
who had been living wild in the woods until he was approaching 
the age of puberty, expressed what he felt only by inarticulate 
cries, and had no more notion of articulate sounds than he had 
of moral relations. There are many other, and apparently well- 
authenticated, histories of deserted children, living wild in soli- 
tude, or associating with animals; and it is worthy of notice, 
that they were not only incapable of uttering articulate sounds 
when first they were discovered, but that, with one or two ex- 
ceptions, it does not appear that any of them ever learned to 
speak afterwards.* It would seem that it is only at a very 
early age that the ear can be taught to make that nice distinc- 
tion of sounds, and the muscles of the mouth and lips be trained 
to those nice varieties of action, which are alike necessary to 
speech: an observation which is confirmed by our every-day 
experience of the difficulty of acquiring the right pronunciation 

* A work entitled " Notice historique sur le Sauvage de 1'Aveyron, par 
P. J. Bonnaterre, Professeur de l'Histoire Naturelle," &c, contains much 
carious information respecting, not only the Savage of Ayeyron, but also 
respecting many other cases of children similarly deserted. 



NOTE H. 277 

of any foreign language with which we have not been familiar 
from a very early period of life. The difficulty is sufficiently 
great as to languages the most nearly allied to our own, but it 
must be immeasurably greater as to others differing more widely 
from it, being spoken by other families of the human race, of 
other habits, in other climates, and in other regions of the earth. 
The various modes of spelling the name of the founder of the 
Mahometan religion adopted by English writers show how dif- 
ferent has been the impression which these simple Arabic sounds 
have made on different English ears ; and we are told that " tra- 
vellers collecting the dialects of tribes in the Caucasus, and on 
the frontiers of India, have brought home and published lists of 
words gathered on the spot and from the same people, and yet 
so different in their alphabetical appearances that the same dia- 
lect has figured in Ethnological books under different names."* 
A consultation of philologists has lately been held, having for its 
object to invent an universal alphabet applicable to all existing 
languages, with a view especially to facilitate the labors of the 
missionaries. That something may be done in this direction is 
probable enough: but the most comprehensive alphabet that 
human ingenuity can contrive will not meet the main difficulty 
of the case ; and, taking into consideration all the circumstances 
which have been mentioned, it does not seem reasonable to ex- 
pect that the proposed object can be attained, except to a very 
limited extent. 

* Proposal for a Missionary Alphabet, by Max Miiller, M.A., Taylorian 
Professor of Modem Languages at Oxford, p. 45. 

24 



Note I Page 240. 

If any one of the phrenological doctrines has been supposed to 
be better established than another, it is that of the cerebellum 
being the seat of the sexual passion. The following extract 
from Leuret's work on the Nervous System will show what it is 
really worth: — 

"Le developpement comparatif de l'encephale des chevaux 
soumis a la castration, et de ceux que Ton a laisses entiers devait, 
s'il etait bien determine, servir a la solution des questions que je 
m'etais posees, et me fournir un document propre a confirmer, 
ou a detruire, la theorie de Gall concernant 1'influence que la 
castration exerce sur le cervelet. M. Gerard Marchant a bien 
voulu faire pour moi cette epreuve, en pesant comparativement 
le cerveau, le cervelet, et la moeUe allongee, d'un certain nombre 
de chevaux entiers, de juments, et de chevaux hongres, qui ser- 
vent aux operations de l'ecole d'Alfort. Les pesees faites par 
M. Marchant, avec le concours de M. Lassaigne, offrent toute la 
garantie d'exactitude que l'on peut desirer, et je les regarde 
comme inflniment preferables a la simple inspection du crane 
dont Gall se contentait toujours, ou meme a la mensuration de 
la cavite cranniene du cervelet, quelque exacte qu'on puisse la 
faire. 

" Le tableau suivant contient le poids absolu, et le poids rela- 
tif, du cerveau, du cervelet, et de la moelle allongee de qua- 
rante-trois chevaux entiers, douze juments, et vingt-un chevaux 
hongres." 



NOTE I. 279 

Here follow the tables, which it is unnecessary to give in de- 
tail, but of which the following is the result : — 

" La comparaison du poids relatif du cerveau et du cervelet 
donne ce rapport d'une maniere exacte ; et ces rapports sont lea 
suivants : 
" Chez les chevaux hongres 

le cervelet est au cerveau comme 1 est a 5'97 
Chez les juments .... comme 1 est a 6-59 

Chez les 6talons ..... comme 1 est a 7-07 
" Ainsi ce sont les etalons qui ont comparativement le cervelet 
le moins developpe : les juments sont mieux favorisees qu'oux 
sous ce rapport ; et les chevaux hongres le sont plus que les uns 
et les autres. Si l'un des deux parties principales de l'encephale 
s'est atrophied c'est le cerveau, car il est seulement de 419 
grammes, tandis que le cerveau des etalons est de 433 : et si 
1'une d'elles s'est developpee de maniere a, predominer sur lea 
autres c'est le cervelet des chevaux hongres, qui pese 70 grammes, 
tandis que celui des etalons et des juments n'ont pese que 61."* 
"Whoever is desirous of inquiring further into the system of 
Gall and Spurzheim, will do well to consult the " Bxamen de la 
Phrenologie," by M. Flourens, and the "Treatise on Phreno- 
logy," in the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, by 
Dr. Roget. In the former the subject is discussed on general 
grounds ; in the latter it is still more fully considered in its de- 
tails ; and in both it is treated in a manner worthy of the high 
reputation of the respective authors. 

* Anatomle compar6e du Syst&me Nervetix, tome L 
THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 1 



98 875 5 



